The state of the art: the rant that starts it all

To kick this blog off, I'll begin with the reasons that made me start it, and see if you might find some common ground in the following rant.

As some may agree, Warhammer Fantasy (as per the current edition, at least) suffers somewhat from the divide between what players call the competitive (warhammer as a sport) and the fluffy (warhammer as a storytelling/roleplaying experience).

While this has been discussed at length by others, I put forward that one of the biggest reasons that happens is that the core game rules do nothing to bridge this gap. The Core Rules only provide a basic framework for running fantasy battles, and your average basic pick-up game (which is the norm if you don't have a large enough group) runs without invoking any narrative components.
For an RPG player, this is generally no problem, because a rulebook/sourcebook is simply the tool used to build a story, which grows cooperatively between the players and the GM when they meet up.
Warhammer, however, is an adversarial game with no GMs to arbiter it (in most cases), so rules and balance are of much more importance to players (and reasonably so). Therefore, smooth operation of the rules and ensuring fairness is required for enjoyable gameplay.
Additionally, while an RPG session depends heavily on story elements to glue it together, a Warhammer battle has no need of story/narrative elements in itself, and can run simply as a strategy game (the competitive view). Therefore, narrative elements can easily be seen as superfluous add-ons, as they normally have no effect on the game.

From a gaming/strategy perspective, the Core Rules (as they are) have also caused a shift in the game towards a points denial approach to victory. This is fomented by the rules themselves: the battle setup of the 6 core scenarios and victory conditions. Additionally, the game penalizes certain unit choices, because they are simply sub-optimal in these conditions, as well as interaction with some armies whose basic strategy relies more heavily on avoidance tactics (Wood Elves for instance).
I am not by far the first to tackle this: MrMalorian and TheSustainableCenter have already approached this question nicely.

The way some things work (cannons, redirecting, steadfast, conga-lining, undead crumble, etc) is also quite incoherent with what you would expect in an actual battle, and simply become rules gimmicks that are used to great effect in strategy, in contradiction to common sense (especially for newer players).  

These are all points that I hope to cover in this blog.

Thankfully, IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY!    :)

The solution can be very simple: include more scenarios, adopt house rules, and overall make the game better with our own hands. If RPGs do this ALL THE TIME without ANY problems, there is little reason why it can't happen for Warhammer.

Not everybody knows about it, because it's not official? Well, DotA didn't start official either, and it's huge now. And Erratas ARE official, but not everybody carries them around (and they can decide games).

As said in many Warhammer Rulebooks of editions past, "Warhammer is your game".

What I hope to contribute with this blog is a series of options and "patches", if you will, that you may find interesting and useful to add/modify in your game, that I have put together and use in my games. Mix and match, use what you like, throw away and spit on what you don't.

Whether for gaming among friends (your garage-hammer) or for a framework of standardized rules in your Friendly Local Game Store.

The goal is to bring Warhammer closer together, bridging the gap between army optimization (which is perfectly reasonable that everyone does) and interesting narrative games, with more purpose to the conflict, more variety in objectives and allowing all units to shine and have their place in the spotlight.

Explore, use it, tweak it and have fun.