Ulthuan

As far as I'm aware, one of the FAQ updates said that the End Times rules are now "the" rules, and that in any game of warhammer fantasy, if one player wants to bring an end times army, thats his choice.

can anyone point me towards a link in that regard? Or am i mistaken?

The FAQ's are no longer online. And as far as official rules and GW is concerned, WH is dead, so "the" rules are now actually age of sigmar...

But, the ET rules indeed state that their rules replace WH (where they contradict) and the WH FAQ did indeed change the armyselection rules to allow you to use 50% lords and 50% heros instead of 25%.

Personally however, I would discuss it with your opponent before the game. Given the state of WH at the moment, a no more official support, that is the only sensible approach in my view. ET rules tend to mess up balance a lot and if one player is unprepared for them it can lead to a very unfun game.

Rod

Thanks

I'm not suggesting that i'd just turn up with an unbeatable end times army - im not that type of player

This actually stems from a discussion we had about 50% lords/heroes rule that came in with the same update. My argument was that that is in essence an 'end times' rule, that was errata'd into the official rules as part of the update which made the end times rules 'official' therefore, in my eyes, you play the 50% rules if you are playing end times rules. His argument is that it was a separate rule update, so you should always now play 50% with 8th ed, even if you're not playing end times rules.

what are your thoughts?

Technically speaking your friend is correct. The 50% was indeed updated in the regular BRB errata, making it part of standard WH. So 'by the book' WH is indeed with 50%.

But I do think you should see it in the light of what came after. At the point in time when this happened in WH, GW had stopped worrying about any kind of balance in the game and basically decided to go out with a bang. So I personally treat the 50% as an optional rule within the 8th ed. ruleset.

Rod

Yup, it was a permanent change to the game, when it was still supported. Though it doesn't really matter anymore. You make you're own game now - out of the box 8th, end times or some sort of local or global comp. Its all up to the players now!

I've almost never seen a tournament (and England at least still has plenty of 8th edition tournaments) since the change that didn't allow 50% Lords and Heroes.

A shame in some ways.

Did it really change that much? In the end you're exchanging rare/special units for lords/heroes - hardly a no-brainer.

For some armies not so much, Dwarfs, Wood Elves, Skaven maybe.

But High Elf or WoC tourney lists for example, changed a lot. It tended to reinforce the general shift from units to super-hard flying characters.