OK. Here's the story.

My wife, about ten years ago, got into Warhammer fantasy. She said that she enjoyed doing the painting of the figures and showed me some of her work... which got me involved into learning more about it... I've read the 7th edition almost cover to cover and I'm very impressed and I want to get involved.

Is there a particular thing that I should buy to build an army?

These are the forums for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. You're best asking these questions on a forum for the miniatures game.

Yes this is the wrong forum, but I will try to help anyway.

Games Workshop (the company behind all things Warhammer) have just brought out the 8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. This is a hard backed book at over 500 pages long. They are also about to release (early September) the boxed version of the game, this will contain a smaller version of the rule book (rules only - no fluff, I like the fluff though) over 70 plastic models, which will enable you to create 2 small armies for High Elves and Skaven, these are some excellent models and it has 2 hero models for both armies and a few units as well. It also has range rulers, dice and magic and War Machine Blast templates. So those two are good possible places to start, that will help you play the game. You would then also need an Army Book for your chosen army, There are currently 15 Armies to choose from, and all have an army book, although they are currently updating the books to fitinline with 8th edition, so it could be worth waiting a while for a newer version of your chosen army book to come out. But to warn, they do onlbring out 2 army books a year, so it may be a few years before it is released. Lastly you will need the miniatures themselves. These tend to come in plastic form in boxes to enable you to build a complete unit as well as champion, musician and standard bearer. These will most probably need to be glued together to create the units. You can also get metal units, these tend to be hero units more than standard units, but is not solely. Then you can paint them.

Obviously all this so far has been if you want to collect, build, paint and play with an army. However if all you want to do is paint miniatures then I would recommend just going to a Games Workshop and look at all the miniatures and choose any that you fancy painting and get those, irrespective of army!

Hope this helps, if you want more details then just ask again, or you can look at the Games Workshop website.

Gazery

Also just to explain,

Roleplaying games are a dramatic interaction where players create characters who on a personal level get to experience the world that the game is set in, as the protagonists of a story that is told together. One player is a the game (or dungeon or a ton of other titles) master and he hosts the game, he has a basic plot for the story that he wants to tell, tells the player what the weather is like, how the villagers are reacting or what monsters are attacking them all while the players then have their characters react to these things the way the role they decided to play would.

The players themselves design who their representation are, so you can be the sneaky thief, the honourable dwarf warrior or the servant girl who ran away to experience the world, all of these could be player characters.

If your interested in getting into this hobby then this game has an excellent core box that gives you everything you need to gather up a few friends, open a couple of bugmans ales and sit down for an evening of adventure and excitement.

UncleArkie said:

Beautiful explanation.

I also want to thank Gazery, because I never even see a WB game and, even if I think I won't get into a miniatures game where there is not one person playing it, it did give something to think about, buying this new GW release something as a board miniature game - like BattleLore.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Game is currently on it's third edition. The first was from 86, if I'm not mistaken. The second was released around 2002 (again, if I'm not wrong, and possibly I'm in for an year or two).

Every RPG is made of a scenario and a system. There are RPG which are directed to any scenario you can think of ("generical" RPGs), but I guess most of them has a system built to meet a scenario description. So there are scenarios made for an RPG (and Warhammer is one of them) and RPGs made for a scenario that already exists (such as... hum... Lord of the Ring and A Song of Ice and Fire). I personaly like the concept of a system built for a scenario better, because a given system largely influences the experience you are going to live, and so different system will have different feels. But there are amazing (or good, or bad) systems that are not attached to a scenario (FUSION, The Window - which is just web released, narrative directed, you can find it in www.mimgames.com -, GURPS... how is D&D currently?).

So, Warhammer is based on a world of Grimm and Perilous adventure. It is very rarsh, although you can put a lot of funy things in it as well. It all depends in the type of mood you are looking for a gameplay. Also, there are people the focus on a more mysterious way of viewing and dealing with things in the world of Warhammer, with Chaos (the evil forces) being a constant presence, but always hidden or unsure. And there are people that focus on the more clear way, describing lots of pyrotecnics going on on daily life and where war against Chaos appear in the form of huge monsters and demons. Warhammer did influence Warcraft's esthetics, after all. And if you play Warhammer Online computer game, you will see something like that.

About the system, the first edition was a more intricated system then the second, teh 80s having a whole different way of organizing RPG mechanics. But Warhammer was ever an alternative to RPGs more number-and-system-focused (in my opinion), so there was a focus on the story and character interpretation. Also, the scenario had a huge space on Warhammer books.

Second edition tryed to fix some problems with the systematics of first edition. There are people that say it succeeded, and people that find it worse in some aspects. Second edition has a kind of simple system and also a lot of room for interpretation (and this point, in my opinion, always relies much more on the way a group wants to view, deal with and play any RPG system there is). Also the scenario changed a little, because the years passed and Warhammer Battle, the miniatures counterpart, was changing or dealing with the scenario in other ways.

And now we have Third Edition, from FFG, the company which bought Warhammer's licence from Games WorkShop. It is a lot different, both from previous editions and also from other RPGs. It varies more greatly than previous editions did from different RPGs. That is because FFG has brought a lot of components to the game, making it look like something similar to a board game. But also because this components, and the new systematics, do try to be integrated with the story, making room for a strong story-focus and using the mechanics as other ways to interact with the story and even tell it. In my opinion, is a bold move to be made, a great try. I see there are people unsure about it, people which think of it as misscast, and people who find it very entertaining and a lot of fun. Personally I'm not sure as yet, and I'm diving into playtesting and the will to make it work. I'm glad FFG tryed it, and now they are even giving us ways to not use all the components and play 3e more like traditional RPGs (not that you coulnd't do it before, but the game wasn't directed to it). So the ways of playing 3e will get more diverse from now on.

Why thank you good sir.

Best thread ever...