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I wasn’t saying that 5th edition was the best in general, but that the army books were most definitely superior – VASTLY superior – to anything that came after. The depth, style, artwork, attention to and level of detail, creativity haven’t been matched, not even close. It’s like comparing a Renaissance painting to a CGI render.
As for the various editions in general, I can’t say anything specific for 1st and 2nd editions WHFB, never had them and they are FAR too expensive to buy now, but from what I’ve heard and read about them, they were more like ‘first drafts’ rather than fully fleshed out rules sets. Nice collectibles, but probably not very viable today.
Some would argue that 3rd edition – which was a fully fleshed out rules set – was ‘the best’ and they may have a point, it was definitely more ‘realistic’, meaning more similar to a historical game than the following ones were.
4th and 5th – aka Herohammer – were kind of a high benchmark in terms of High Fantasy ostentatiousness, something 9th ed (TOW) seems to try to kinda sorta revive but doesn’t quite dare to go all the way.
While 6th edition did a few good things, such as tone down the mega-dominance of characters and elite units and forcing players to take at least some regular troops, it also took away a lot of the color and pageantry, making everything much more streamlined and often quite bland. Coinciding, s it were, with the start of the black primer craze, the resulting dulling down of paint color across the board and sepia pages replacing full color ones.
Another good example of no.1 being the best in a series would be the Harry Potter movies. The first one is among the best fantasy films ever made, the second is still good but not quite as good as the first, the third is a little too short, hectic and confusing (if you haven’t read the book) for all the story it attempts to cover, a problem which is worse in no.4. I don’t know how people who didn’t read the books first can follow the action and understand what’s going on in movies 5 and 6. At least by the final one, they had wised up and decided to make 2 movies out of a lot of book……
