Review of Warhammer Fantasy 5th Edition

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t prefer 5th Edition over 8th Edition. The magic system isn’t as interesting as 8th Edition, but the game seems to be much more about the tactical side of things rather than a simple lucky dice roll here and there.
There’s a lot more flexibility in 5th Edition on how you can create you army list. You can spend up to 50% of your points on your heroes (with most of the armies), 25%+ on Troops, up to 25% on war machines, and up to 25% on monsters. I quite enjoy the fact that I could potentially field a spider, dragon, etc without having a rider atop of it. I have always enjoyed Warhammer Fantasy Battle, but the limits were just too much in 8th Edition.
4th and 5th Edition are known as Herohammer to many veteran players. The funny part of that is that I haven’t found a character in my army to be particularly useful in my army, and the only time my General was even productive was when he was stuck in a unit of 24 goblins with spears. I’d say the characters only become MVPs of the army when they’re decked out with all kinds of magic items.
The complexity isn’t as overwhelming as I originally thought it may be. The Battle Book that you get in the starter set is very encouraging, and there’s even a section in the back that shows you how the points value of a model is calculated. This could potentially be a way of writing down stats of your own.
Overall, the army books seem to be nicely balanced (with the exception of a few units here and there). The system is much more enjoyable now that I can legally stick my Orc Shaman on Wyvern into my Orcs and Goblins army at only 1000 points.