Thanks guys, it was fun.
GP - yes an 8FT table, it was pretty full but still had some space. They were two very high model count armies though. Would need to be 10FT for more points.
Konrad - I very much take your points on board, though I don't completely agree with all of them. Now that we have moved massively past competitive game 6th (though there are starting to be some 32 player tournaments around here going on this year) I fell some of the worst excesses of the game have passed. I do very much view the game with Rose tints, I loved 6th Ed. I played a lot of games, I was working at GW whilst at Uni for a big chunk of its life so was playing 3-4 games a week, all to a good standard, not just the kids. Also Rufus, myself and even Midaski were going to big tournaments both home and aboard. They were halcyon days!
On your points:
1) Terrain. WFB is not 40K its not about loads of terrain and the game is abstract, not TLOS. A hill lets you see over anything as its a hill and hills are bigger than both trees and houses. Just because the 'model' hill isn't. Woods do stop ranked units marching through them, but not skirmishers (or halflings ranked up
) that's what happens IRL. Most of the field should be clear. I find the terrain rules okay, and even use the terrain tables at the end of the rule book to generate the table. In the game pictured we have a couple of hills, a building in middle, a building to some side and a couple of woods. Just enough to give you some tactics, but not enough to clog the game up. Ranged attacks aren;t that deadly generally so having the abilitly to see move thinks isn't a problem, like it would be in 40k or even AoS.
2) Magic. We have a no dispell scroll rule generally. I used the seal of destruction in a 6000pts game and nothing more. It lets the magic flow a bit more but it does reward having more wizards within out the boring 2 turns shut out of 2 level 1's with 4 scrolls. This does help.
3)Game balance is good, only having 4 characters up to 2999pts is a real limit and makes you take loads of troops as the special and rare are limited as well.
4) Guessing ranges IS 6th ed. all that 2D6 charge bullshit. It is a skill and a very important one. In the game my opponent thought his rat ogres were out of range of the flagellants to charge, but was wrong, and got 7.5" charged. That is tactics and the closer to the limit you take it the bigger the chance of getting it wrong. But your opponent also has to risk it, as if your 8.25" away your fucked, stranded in front of your intended victim. I will caveat this by saying i am very good at guessing ranges, just from playing so much. Random charges suck, skill should win games. Also we don't allow cannon sniping of lone characters as its not in, what we feel, is the spirit of the game. Please insert the Duke of Wellingtons quote here.
5) This is one area i do fully agree with you. I to like the step up rule to always let units attack back. It makes sense to me, and gives units some teeth. This is one I am working on bringing it to all our game. I didn't like the fight in 2 ranks rule from 8th. I felt that was part of the move to bigger units (selling more models focus) of 8th and was eventually what killed WFB
Step up gives the basic troops, something you can and have to take lots of in 6th a role and chance.
6) I also agree on this one. I took one in a 6000pts game as it seemed to be big enough, fluff wise, to have a steam tank, but wouldn't take one to a 2000pts game. It's pretty hard core. However, like everything, if you know how to deal with it is isn't that hard to kill. I faced one in a 2000pts game recently, with my DOW army (massively bottom tier army) and killed it turn two no problem. Characters or monsters with GW make a mess of it. I just blocked it with some light cav moving up to an inch from it. This negates its charge impact hits, then charged it with three basic ogres with GW. They knocked the shit out of it in a turn. Once its degraded its difficult to do much with due to the steam points mechanic.
Though to be fair, when it first came out in 2004, people would openly come up to me in tournaments and say if we'd got drawn against one another then they wouldn't play the game. So the opinion at the time was against it. It's for fun big games for me. Then there is plenty of stuff that can kill one tank.
Lastly i'd like to add that 6th ed plays really quickly and involves rolling not that many dice, in parts due to issues mentioned above. Particularly compared to current 40k which involves rolling a shit load of dice, then re rolling them for a multitude of reasons. Getting D3 re rolls for 2nd sign is a massive thing in 6th. Really useful.
Just my two pence worth.
Peter, lets play 6th Ed at Eurobash. 4000pts is a good point. Should be do able in 4 hrs easily.