It has been a long while since I have played any Warhammer Fantasy. The last time I played was about six or seven years back. Sometime last year we all started talking about starting up a Fantasy army to play next summer - this was around this time last year. Well, this idea kind of puttered around and finally lost momentum amongst Jester and Monkey and myself. Sort of.
They each picked up a box of Fantasy models and painted up one or two as a test but my obsessive compulsive behavior reared its head and I bought an Ogre Kingdoms battalion. I know you hear a lot of talk about how the Ogres aren't competitive but for me that didn't even factor into it - I love me some big models and the Ogres are just full of em.
Over the next year I slowly worked on my Ogre army. I say slowly but it was more of a build a whole bunch of models and paint them and then wait a few months kind of process.
During this time I didn't really read the rules or even buy the Ogre book. I just looked online, found a fairly standard build, and started building towards that. I figured that would be a good starting place and I could build from there once I had everything painted.
Well I am finally at that point and I am quite excited. I have a full 2000 points of Ogres assembled and painted. Last week I ordered a copy of the Warhammer Fantasy rules from the Skull Pass set off of eBay and am re-learning everything. The more I read the more excited I am getting. I have even started up a second Fantasy army - the scurrying Skaven.
I am most excited about two phases of the game - movement and magic. In 40k movement is important, but not nearly as important is in Fantasy. If you get a bit out of place it can have devastating results. Some people really hate the magic phase and how it can dominate the game. For me that is one reason why I am excited. Psykers and pretty powerful in 40k - but they don't even hold a candle to the destructive power that a tooled up mage can unleash in Fantasy. It is this difference that excites me, but at the same time I am sure I will come to be very wary and cautious of it.
For some reason the idea of marching and wheeling and facing just makes me very excited to play Fantasy again. I am sure that I am going to have a lot of learning to do before I am any good but for me that isn't really the point. I usually have the same amount of fun whether I lose or win - for me it is just all about playing the game and hanging out with a group of good people.