Of course everybody is allowed to have an opinion and voice it. But the other side of that coin is that a lot of people will have an opinion on uninformed opinions posted here.

I'm not saying there are no downsides to WFRP3. There is a lot wrong with it. But "it's more boardgame than RPG" is an opinion that's posted very often on this and other forums, and that's very frustrating to a lot of people because it's so incredibly wrong. It's an impression that's very easily dispelled by just reading the rulebook. (After that, you should be left with the impression that it's a real RPG, but it butchered a much beloved setting. Also not quite correct, but more justifiable.)

mcv said:

Thats the thing though, I never said it was a board game. Even when it first was announced and bits shown of the product. It may at times looked more and more a boardgame, and have boardgame style components and i may say things like "well there is a tracking board" but I always agreed that it was a RPG.

I dont even thing the OP of this thread called it a board game in as much words as "Hey its a boardgame!". But that is one of the first arguments the pro WFRP 3E guys bring up, even when the con WFRP3E guys dont say it. We say things like "eh, too many extra parts distract me" and so forth.

We also hear the "try it, you'll like it" comment alot as well. Didnt work with Mom and her lima beans or cousin Earl and his dope, so not a good track record LOL.

So why am I hear, well I do love the setting. I want to learn more about the game and the way others see it and I want to eventually hopefully be won over by it (the Gathering Storm was almost there). But mostly because I was a member of the community back when it was WFRP2E and have never received an official eviction notice.

The biggest thing stopping me are the cards and dice.

gruntl said:

Even I have run a couple of sessions with 3e.

To quote the OP:

"The game seems more like a board game or a card game rather than an RPG. I'm inclined to agree with them."

So, that's why we're saying the OP needs to play the game, because it *isn't* a boardgame (or card game) despite all the bits and cards you see when you open the box.

dvang said:

Ah ha. Understood.

What I think those who criticize 3e miss are a lot of the little details the system uses from traditional RPG's that have been re-addressed and reapplied through a different aesthetic. I will go into a few of those points here as to keep this post from being epically long:

The Dice: the dice, though they use symbols do a large number of traditional computations in a much easier fashion than having to do the math itself. On a base level. This analysis will be flat because I will do so without curves and break it down to the fundamentals of successes. A characteristic die has a 50% success rate. That is like saying in traditional RPG terms you have a 50% success chance. A misfortune die has a 33 percent fail rate. In essence, without curves that basically says if you're rolling one characteristic dice against 1 misfortune you have a 17% chance to succeed. Add in a fortune die (which gives a 33% chance of success) and based on very flat math the same roll would have roughly a 50% chance of success. Where these dice succeed is it allows, mechanically, both factors (of unfavorable conditions and favorable conditions) to contribute to the same roll without having to add an subtract a series of modifiers. The "picture" mechanic simply is used to compute a large amount of data very quickly. It is like using a calculator and entering a long stream of numbers by hand versus a computer calculating all that data for you. Additionally, these dice add in two other features of banes and boons. Degree of success is something traditional RPG's have been toying with for years. Dice Pool mechanics such as the Storyteller system and Shadowrun have been toying with for you. The difference is with Warhammer you have two tracks of success. You have the simple successes of the action and the critical successes (or failures) of an action happening simultaneously. Sure there is a lot of math that could be done to calculate how many successes or failures equal a certain degree of success and failure in other RPG's, but the interface would be slower and more unwieldy than the use of the "picture" dice. I saw a major impact on the nature of my game with these two degree of success lines happening in my game. As a very simple example, one of my female players has to meet with a Duke to convince him to stop a Witch Hunt against a powerful Wizard. She decides she wants to look the best to use her appearance impress him and get more people at the party to like her. So, putting this concept to a roll, instead of a dry success/fail for how good she looks the two success lines can work like this. She rolls and gets three successes and two banes. She goes to the party looking very good, however those banes add in, "despite how she looks very put together, there are people who are better dressed than her." In contrast, lets say she rolled three successes and two boons. Those boons can explain not only does she look good, but the other people at the party are very impressed by her look. This can lead very simply in both cases to actual future modifiers such as she gains a bonus white to influence people with the boons or in the case of banes, gains a bonus black to all social actions where they are opposing her. I know it a pretty cheesy example, but it highlights the point of the value of these dice. I understand other systems have critical successes and degrees of success, but they take a great deal of additional computation, happen infrequently (as compared to boons/banes) and are left to a great deal of interpretation. The two varying success lines give a great deal of information. Such as lets say she rolled one success and a boon. Well, she comes well dressed, but not the best (one success), but maybe the boon is she is wearing the Dukes favorite color which draws his attention to her. Where this helps is for new players or players who don't really "get" system or new players to the game a very easy time navigating the ins and outs of situations. If you also give the players freedom to interpret their own rolls; then they feel they get a great deal of input in the system. As I said, all traditional RPG's have these mechanisms, but these dice take all those elements and make them very accessible.

The Tokens/little cards: I know fatigue/stress tracking + tracking tokens for cards seems like a lot. However in traditional RPG's there are always pools that can be spent to achieve certain results or beneficial side effects. Even wounds are technically an expendable pool. This has been covered many times before, but it is really no different than those traditional pools and can be eliminated (as many online character sheets have). However, I find that the chits and special condition cards, or insanities to remember those modifiers and actually use them. It is no easier to manage the fatigue/stress than in any other game with similar mechanics, however the giant tearnext to your character sheet is highly visually impacting and serves as a great reminder (hey, your fatigued, take a black die). Also the way those mechanisms interface via the dice have a way easier mechanism in terms of adding dice that it makes figuring out rolls easier. It is a basic fact it is much easier to simply add then to subtract and simple addition is much, much easier than addition and subtraction. For instance you take a stat of 10 + skill modifier - this difficulty modifier - a fatigue modifier is more straining than simply stat of x equals three blue + 1 yellow for skill + 1 black for fatigue. The dice do all the hard math for you. Those little cards also have a high visual impact. If you have a critical flipped over with all that information printed there, you won't miss it because of the visual impact. Plus it does stop what bogged down old additions with critical hits where you have to write down all those penalties in a tiny little box that was never too big to keep track of multiple wounds. Then the player has to sort through a series of chicken scratches to find the pertinent information. The cards have dice symbols the player can quickly see such as a black square and they quickly remember oh, add a black to my social actions or whatever. The information is clear, readily accessible, and easy to use. Sure traditional RPG design had these same elements, but the user interface was not nearly as easy as it is in 3e (as a matter of opinion, but I do believe math and science may back me up). I agree it may not be as simple as Call of Cthulhu, but the elegance of that game is the simplicity of its system for what it is designed to be as an RPG. Other games, the system is too flat to deal with the types of flavors required.

Action Cards: You actually don't need them, except for the spells. Anyone who has played a few RPG's can quickly figure out success add damage to the weapon. It is what action cards do. Boons trigger critical hits or beneficial side effects. It is so easy to play this game without them it is unreal (and we did for two months with stickers on dice before the game was release and continued for months there after. Sure, spells will need them, but I do seem to recall DND has had spell cards for ages, which, back in the years of 2e they were highly useful as the Wizard didn't have to reference the book all the time to find a spell. So really, it is no different than that.

Trackers: Trackers again, are not necessary. I have played enough RPG's in my life and never,ever used anything like them. Are they board-gamey, no. Can they be...not really. Where these things actually rock is they allow players to interface with an encounter more. It also allows the goals of an encounter to change. Ever since I started using them, our combats no longer focus around dropping damage and slaying "all the monsters." This is not to say I didn't achieve similar ideas before, but players in the middle of combats, with all the objectives in the world have a tendency to fall back on...this is a combat, I must kill to stay alive. Instead the trackers have refocused them, used to lead them to the desired narrative results rather than the pure hack-n-slash of a good fight. For instance, in an encounter I have planned for our next session, the players meet with the Wizard from the example above at an Inn where the Duke has double crossed them and planned an ambush to kill the Wizard. The focus is on saving the Wizard. The tracker will be used to determine how much they elude their attackers. Therefore I can reward them in multiple ways. For instance. A player has a good round of fighting, it helps them escape. The non-fighters scoop up the Duke and try to make it out the door. That would be trackers advanced. Another player lets say drops down a chandelier to block the escape, that is another advance. When they reach an event space new threats will be created. Sure, in traditional RPG play I used to do all of this, but players who did not focus on the slaughter felt that though they did an action, what did it really mean. Was it really more helpful than slaughtering the attackers? The tracking token advancing down that simple, little stream of spaces helps tell them, yes it did. For great role-play and great choices and great rolls, I will advance the token a number of spaces. If they choose to simply stay and fight all the guys at the inn. Their token won't advance, reminding them, this isn't about killing these guys, it's about saving the Wizard. Something, I could not do in any other system. And if the tracking token doesn't move, they will find themselves in a world of hurt or fail to do what they must do to survive and achieve what they want in the narrative. All the tracker does is really create an agreed upon situation. It clearly explains the GM's intentions, the narrative intentions and the players choices and shows everyone: here is the impact it's having and here is what you are doing to help you succeed. That basis of a communal understanding helps every player (including the GM) the fundamental of what they, as a group are trying to achieve and the story they are trying to tell. I hated trackers at first, but now I find I don't know why RPG's haven't been using them for years. Again, you don't have to use them, but in my opinion, if you aren't using them, you have simply missed the great advantages (both in terms of the narrative and the game's action) of what they can do. The rulebooks (and GM's toolkit) are rife with ways to use them and the more I read those rules, the more I began to realize how great they are. And no, you don't have to track everything and I only use them when the situation is dire or I feel we as a group need to focus the action in a particular manner. I have run combats without them (such as the players escaping a palace), but have found when they are useful, they are very, very useful.

So I guess that's the beginning of my great thesis about these tools (lol). Hope you enjoyed the read and hope it explains why all those "board game bits and funny dice" really help improve the experience rather than detract. They only detract from what a player is used to. As it is with any RPG, it all comes down to how you use them. Happy gaming.

Commoner

One thing that I like, without having read the whole thread, is that 3rd ed. does have all these components.

The collector in me loves nothing more than to open one of FFG's boxes and take out all these gadgets to use.

I am also sold on expansions with new career cards, actions cards, talents etc. like no other RPG have done in the past.

It does also help that 3rd ed. is the most freeform RPG I have ever played, and the one game that brought me back to the genre from a six year absence (I played for about 20 years before that).

I'm still not a fan of this edition.

In fact, I finally made the leap out of WFRP 3 last week by selling all of my stuff off for a fraction of the price I paid.

I will not be harping on any of my issues with WFRP 3. There are just too many people on this website that like to browbeat anyone who has a negative opinion of WFRP3.

Props to those out there still able to speak their minds about their issues with WFRP 3. I'm tired...very very tired.

...still going to lurk a bit thougth!

LeBlanc13 said:

I don't think anyone is interested in browbeating anyone. The only people I have seen get flamed are the ones ranting about what is wrong with it without having even played it. All this happened two years ago when D&D 4e came out as well. A new edition brings out a lot of he said she said style drama. Myself having never played 1e or 2e but having played a lot of D&D4e love this system. It made GMing exciting again. I used to know 4e frontwards and backwards but even having only played WFRP 3e a few times I feel so much more comfortable and in command of the system. And that lets me spend more time playing the NPCs and keeping the story flowing. Just all in all a better gaming experience than other games I have played in the last 20 years of rollin' dice. For settings nothing will ever beat Shadowrun for me but for systems this is my favorite so far.

Wow, now I have to read all this in order to get a proper idea of how the argument is running.

Bugger.

Still trying to get people to actually play a game. They don't seem enthusiastic.

Crazy Aido said:

I actually had that with one of the groups I play with, there are some hardcore old grognards in it, but the funny thing is that we had the same argument when 2E came out. They said it was over produced, that the grotesque humour and grit was gone, that players where overpowered and that magic was way too horribly out of balance with the rest of the game xD.

So is a component game with a meta game structure really for everyone, no, but it its not for you then diceless role-playing is probably where its at for you, very few to no RPG's have good mechanics, the whole realism debate is moot, why, because its all in our heads and bar a (thankfully) small minority on this forum none of us have seen combat of any kind, even fewer actually know sword fighting, even making the assumption is making an ass of yourself.

That Peacekeeper doesn't like the games mechanics does not make him a heretic (thats a different game ), it just gives him an opinion, do I think he is wrong, hell yes, and so it goes on, I still respect what he has to say and try not to revert to flame war defcon 1, we have experiences that shape us and the games we like have a tendency to be the ones that gave us epic experiences and I am still pretty sure that if we ran into each other and where both between games and I invited him to join a new group of 3E he would go, sure, not my fav game, but gaming is good when the group is good, I'v never played a bad RPG, I'v played with a few bad groups.

Now for my pro E3 argument. A lot of the E2 people complain that there isn't enough fluff, its a big one here at least. What I say is, don't you have 2000 pages on the empire already, I don't need more information about how dark the woods are or how corrupt the nobles are, I already know, there are a lot of books on this already and most of us already own them. So really what we need is crunch, good old nerdy crunch, is this not ideal for new players, no? But they can get this information a million other places, I hear that GW does books as well set in this game setting .

Okies I'm out, night, night and take care all.

UncleArkie said:

I would like to thank you! As someone that as seen combat, you have hit the nail on the head. NO GAME can replicate the true experience of real combat. The noise, smells, adrenaline, fear, blood, since of loss, excitement, disgust, or shock... The best a good game can do is give a taste of the tactical aspects, some good times together, a chance at exploring the imagination, and maybe a small sense of loss when a beloved character dies (ok, a BIG sense of loss for some of you..LOL).

The entire point of the game is to ENJOY yourself. If you can't get past the mechanics to have fun, move on (no fanboyism here, just pointing out the best course of action in any situation you don't enjoy...) The simple fact of gaming life is there are many different styles of gaming for most of us to be able to find something we can enjoy! Personally, I find this system is fun, innovative, and the bits are a blast to collect.

Well, them's my 3 cents... Happy gaming!!!

Ok, so far I have acquired the adventurer's toolkit and the GM kit. Still waiting for the Magic supp. to show in the land of leprechauns.

ALSO! I have tow players and hopefully a third for a small, six to eight session campaign I will be starting in the next week or two!

So now we can really test this mo'fo out.

As for the GM kit I was... Not dissappointed, but not exactly dazzled either. No more new monsters, the item cards were, to be honest, a bit of a let down. The opposition group cards were a good tool to use. The GM screen was excellent quality, I'm not sure about the information printed on it, but the progress tracker and the enemy dice bedgets were at least welcome. Not sure about the location cards. The book was... Middling. Not completely useless, but helping me out either. I was hoping for some really inovative ideas for using the dice system to represent bad guys. I didn't get that. *shrugs*.

Roll on WOM! I'm actually looking forward to this one.

Ok, double post I know, but this just hit me.

Starvation, disease and getting drunk...

Where the hell are they?

You'll find them in just about every RPG corebook. For something like WHFRP, where we'd like the focus to be on grit, I would have thought they were a given. But they're not in there. Now for my first session I want my PC's dying of septic fever, so what am I supposed to do? Make it up? Fine, but I would assume that this kind of thing is at least worthy of a paragraph. We can't have ALL our PC's dying by kenetic lead overdose, and WHFRP used to have one of the most feared diseases and plot devices ever, neigleish rot...

Add to this the serious lack of fluff and... You see where I'm going with this?

I was one of the loudest opponents of this game when it was first announced and saw where it was going. I like 2E, and while I don't think that game is perfect, it handled just about everything I wanted or needed pretty well. Despite that I bought into 3E heavily. I own two core sets and every expansion, including Winds of Magic.

I've run the Day Late Shilling Short adventure for four different groups of people since the game's release and every response has been overwhelmingly negative. Now, some might take this as a chance to say it's the way I'm running it, but I'm a 20 year veteran of running roleplaying games from D&D to Shadowrun, to Call of Cthulhu to Warhammer, Burning Wheel and more. I never have a lack for players.

Once I got past my initial dislike I decided to approach the game with a neutral attitude with every intention of giving it a fair chance. It failed every time. Each time the players felt that the die mechanic would eventually become second nature and they'd understand the game a little better, but they were completely put off by the tracking tokens and all of the physical items that they had to keep up with at the table. We've got plenty of room at the table, it was just a lot to deal with.

After some discussions about the character sheets tracking the numbers instead of tokens, they said it still felt like the physical items present in the game only served as a distraction from the story that we were trying to create. One player even said it felt like a solid physical wall between and the setting/adventure. The players felt like the rulebooks were hard to reference, and that there were so many little caveats here and there that it just overwhelmed them to the point where they weren't thinking about what their character was experiencing.

Personally, I like many aspects of the game, they intrigue me. I think there are some good ideas that aren't allowed to shine because of various rules systems that feel clunky and intrusive. My biggest complaint is how much the implied setting of Reikland is simply just not detailed. If I want to know more about Reikland I've got to look it up online or refer to older editions of the game. At this point in the release cycle, I think that is unacceptable.

My point is, there are some good things about this game and there are some bad. For some those negative aspects are simply too numerous to overcome.

Sadly, for myself and the gamers I play with the latter holds true.

ValiantOne said:

Your welcome and take care out there we would like you back in one big chunk please, that goes for you too peace and the rest of you out there too.

Shadowspawn said:

...

I agree with you on the missing fluff for Reikland. I think there should have been one more booklet in the core set with a condensed version of Sigmar's heirs or something. It's a pity they didn't include more fluff.

Otherwise I'm a bit surprised that you've got overwhelmingly negative response from 4 playing groups. It certainly doesn't match what people seem to think in general (based on rankings at BGG and rpg.net). I'm not saying it's you, but depending on what kind of players you had, maybe the demo adventure was not the best option?

If people dislike the physical components maybe you should try to run the adventures more in story mode and less in encounters? At the moment we're doing something like one (combat) encounter every second session, so the tokens and stuff see little use most of the time (we spend about 30-40% of total time in encounter mode I guess). In encounter mode I think the trick it to make sure that the the narrative always comes first (possibly after the dice roll), never deal with the tokens and fiddly stuff until you have resolved the situation storywise. I.e., instead of saying:

I attack the beastman using my Reckless Cleave attack (hmm, lets see, I should then have 4, no 3 blue dice, 1 red, 1 yellow, 1 white, 1 purple and how many black GM?). Rrlrlrlrlr -> I got 2 successes, 1 boons and one chaos star. I must remember to put some recharge tokens on the card, oh and I did 12 damage one crit, is he dead?

It could go something like:

Without any regard for my own safety I swing my sword in a reckless cleave from the right, trying to decapitate the foul monster. (Showing a prepared dicepool, any additions GM?). Rlrlrlrl -> 2 successes, 1 boon and one chaos star. (GM says: you will kill him with that kind of damage, feel free to describe what happens, but remember that the chaos star will make you pay for the victory). My sword strike true despite the feeble attempt of the beast to parry my cleave. The sword hits the side of the beastmans ugly head and cleaves through most of it but annoyingly gets stuck at the last moment (one manouevre to get it free). (Initiative passes, the player puts some recharge tokens where they should be, and removes tokens where he should).

Both the GM and the players need to work to make the system flow and creating a narrative "surrounding" the mechanics. This game is perhaps a bit more demanding in that respect than many others, because if you don't do this the fiddly bits might indeed make the game feel removed from the actual roleplaying. When both GM and players manage to put the storytelling first, the quite uninteresting token management fades into the background. But that is true for all systems of course (mechanics fading into the background when the story is good enough). I'm not saying that my group manages to do this all the time, but it's certainly great when it happens.

Personally I find really rules-heavy systems (like DnD, Shadowrun, and to some extent WFRP2e), where you have to keep track of numbers and status on written sheets to be a lot more distracting than than the 3e stuff, but that's of course just my opinion.

I think that if players used to the details being on a page could convert some of their aids (cards) to printouts like games they're used to (as many players did with games where they converted their book material to cards) they might find the game less 'fiddly'.

I continue to get flubbled by how much stuff I have to manage behind the screen with two or three groups of NPCs during an encounter. Working on some easier paper tracking methods that will (hopefully) make my games run smoother.

I think that's part of it. Put the card information on a sheet and watch some players' reactions change from negative to positive.

Right, I don't disagree that moving things to paper can make the game less difficult to track. Personally I found that D&D was easier to run and manage than a game of WFRP3E, but I'm not saying its a better game. For me it was just easier to keep track of. While I know that the fiddly bits are supposed to make things easier, I find they make things more complex and distracting and that was an opinion shared by each group. (I was very careful about not pushing that opinion on the play groups too, I wanted their honest raw opinions).

I did sit down in an attempt to move all of the problem areas to traditional pen and paper tracking, but I started to wonder what the point was then.. why not just play 2E or another game. The thing is I want to like 3E, I'm just finding it extremely difficult to get there. The evocative artwork is incredible, the adventures so far are very good (light years beyond Green Ronin's adventures in my opinion) and the supplemental material is well written. (Winds of Magic being one of my favorite reads in quite some time..

Just my thoughts..

And I'm thinking that might be all that's holding you back, the presentation of the information.

Playing 2e is not the same as 3e, they are two different games. If you're more comfortable with everything laid out differently, make it work for you. Don't let the cards vs. printouts hold you back from a great, flexible system.

For me, I love the components, but am finding it a hassle from behind the GM screen to keep the crunch straight when I need it. Heck, if I played it right, a combat encounter between the PCs and a Snotling, Goblin, and Orc would mean about 30 Action cards I need to have access to at any time. That's unrealistic.

keltheos said:

I've actually become fairly comfortable with presentation.. well maybe not comfortable but I'm okay with it now rather than hating it. The entire Act /Rally Step isn't too foreign to us as we do play Mouse Guard which relies heavily on a "player's turn" / "GM's turn" mechanic.

I think you hit the nail on the head in your last paragraph. The idea of the components is a neat one but in actual play it becomes unmanageable, even when using the minion rules. One thing that still irks me is that the monsters have access to the basic cards (like Melee Strike and Ranged Strike) and no extra cards for monsters were included in the set for this purpose. The box lists that the contents are made for three players plus the GM, but in reality the boxed set only caters to the players and leaves the GM out cold when it comes to these basic actions. Sure I can use a program to generate these cards or abilities, but you know after paying such a hefty price I don't feel I should have to.

I'll go ahead and say it again, this game is full of great ideas but it suffers some serious logistical drawbacks that make it hard for me to move forward and accept it as the WFRP for my group. I understand that some people are making it work. and to that I say, congrats. I find that some ignore some of the problems we've discussed here but things are getting better around here as time goes by.

Shadowspawn said:

"Making it work" implies that the game is broken and that it is difficult for every group, regardless of play style, to use this system because there are fundamental flaws in the system. I haven't found the system to be fundamentally flawedin fact, I'm honestly baffled by quite a few of the gripes about the system. It's like the people who have a hard time with it don't mean anything remotely like what I mean when I say, "I'm playing an RPG."

I totally get that the game isn't to everyone's tasteheck, I've played with lots of gamers who would hate it! Comments like yours imply that the game has serious basic design issues, and I just don't agree with that. Many of us are not "ignoring" problemswe just play in such a way that the things you experience as real problems don't crop up. I'm not changing my group's play style to accommodate the game; it just turns out that this game accommodates our play style beautifully.

I do wish that I could invite you to sit with our group and try it out and that I could see how your group(s) have played. I think there's something to be learned from seeing different play styles.

Well, there are some people that have issues with the game as it is presented now, just because you don't find any flaws with the game doesn't mean that others are not. The people that are finding flaws with the game are changing things to make it work for them. Thus far I've tried to run the game out of the box as it is meant to be played and every time it has met with resistance. Most everyone says they could get used to it, but they just find the cards, the tokens, the party sheet, the progress trackers and the environment trackers distracting and not necessary. I think that the core rules are solid and I've found a lot of agreement on that as well.

Bottom line is, some players seem to find parts of the game distracting in a way that gets in the way of telling the story. Our group falls into that category. I'm glad your group found the game for you, when that happens you can achieve some truly fine gaming.

Llanwyre said:

I have to agree with this. Put my group in the category of folks who aren't "ignoring" problems or flaws because we aren't encountering any. Maybe our play style is abnormal, but we find the game very easy to run and very rewarding to play. I don't mean to discount or belittle your experience, but the idea that folks have to struggle to make this game work is something I just can't understand.

cronevald said:

Well I would not say that a group has an "abnormal" style if it likes WH3, maybe its only a slight diverging approach to rpgs compared to other more traditional groups which allows your group the acceptance of WH3.

Personally, after reading through the game ruleset, I totally dislike its philosophy. Its the opposite of the way I like my rpgs.

-No mini support and tactical combat for a setting like warhammer? 2nd ed. mini rules are not great, but easy and allow for some tactical decisions and precise movement. The basic concept of areas and not even showing the accurate ranges of distance weapons is a big fail for my simulationist mind.

-I dont like dice pools.

-Components? Basically I like props. For Savage Worlds for example we use Props like chips, bennies and a set of poker cards. But I prefer clever and minimalistic use of props. Those of WH3 seems mostly unnecessary and designed for proprietary reasons, (copy protection for example) and maybe because EVERY FFG game has a lot of fiddly bits (also mostly unnecessary bits IMO) included.

-material for 3 players in the core set? This makes WH3 the first rpg in history which limits the amount of players for economical reasons - only disgusting.

-not really a new start for roleplaying in the warhammer setting. As it seems now they release only few support material per year. If they release the material in this speed the next several years then we get the sourcebook of Talabheim in 2015 and will never be able to see another areas for playing in than the old empire and its neverending stream of chaos cultists. Same chewing gum theme since 20 years - boring. Where are the modules and setting info for elves, dwarfs or arabian adventurers? Where are the fresh setting and adventure ideas? Where are my gyrocopter aircombats? (gladly I have them in my home game because of the pure genius of the Savage Worlds ruleset which supports such themes very easily)

So all in all, I say to FFG, keep your fiddly game. I as WH vet have no need for it.