To add to the discussion, I found 7th and especially 8th to be bringing the focus back to the heroes, like 8th, how good is your mage? I've played from 3rd to 8th, and hands down, 6th was the most fun. More focus on your army's build, how you moved and used said army. We have house ruled in step up, it works fine and more things die per turn. Fear autobreak only really occurs once in a while since usually a fear causing unit that has numbers isn't that powerful to win combat.
I got my old 6th armies out around February last year. I had Vampire Counts at roughly 8k, Tomb Kings at 3k Skaven at 1k, and Bretonnians at 1k, built the skaven and tomb kings up to 3200 point lists and started inviting friends over for beers and games. Now we have roughly 10 players, 31 armies. I am well on my way to my goal of having a good 4-5k point army of each. We play roughly twice a week.
Also have been trying to amalgamate all the rules for the characters that were on the website, various white dwarf magazines, etc. onto one website so they are easier to find.
Still waiting on my Wood Elves to arrive, but here's what I have so far.
Skaven
Ogre Kingdoms
Chaos (Tzeentch, other people have the other factions, Khorne decided to slip in there with a couple models so far) Currently painting
Tomb Kings
Vampire Counts
Empire, painted as Sylvannian for the option to use as levies for my Vampire Counts Von Carstien Appendix list,
Bretonnians
High Elves, Currently in paint process like the Chaos
Dwarfs, with an almost up to points Slayer Storm of Chaos army
Lizardmen, currently building a Lustria army option as well
