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As a counterpoint to the rose-tinted glasses of the other 2nd ed thread, and to allow people to voice a differing opinion without causing that thread to go off-topic, I decided to start this one.

Here's my first thing I don't miss:

The fact that you could have stacking saving throws, like for instance an assassin with armor, field, and dodge saves, or a chaplain with terminator armor on top of his 4+ invulnerable.

2nd thing:

The psychic phase. With the Dark Millenium expansion this phase took up half the game easily, and I didn't like the fact that so much of the game hinged on one model. Often times it seemed like players assumed that everyone was going to come to the table with one max-level psyker, so often I wouldn't bring a psyker at all so my opponent wouldn't get enough cards to play his high-level powers

3rd thing:

Close combat. Sure it was kind of cool that you worked out fights on a model-per-model basis... as long as you didn't have too many people fighting. If you had a big scrum it just made the game take too long. Plus, having extra attacks was more of a hindrance than a benefit, because of how the critical hit/fumble system worked, and having multiple sword-type weapons giving extra parries... made non-swords really redundant because of how CC was all-or-nothing. You either won and got hits, or lost and got hit, but never did both models hit each other... which brings me to my...

4th thing:

Redundant wargear options. Sure there was tons of neato stuff to give your guys... but nobody took power axes because swords gave you parries, why take autoguns when lasguns gave you a -1 saving throw modifier for the same points, etc.

5th thing:

Saving throw modifiers! I know that tons of people love them, but they really made non-terminator-non-invulnerable armor pretty worthless. Why take a regular space marine when a shuriken catapult reduced his save to a 5? A heavy bolter reduced the save to a 6... There was a reason why most space marine players I knew just took as many terminators as they possibly could.

-Ridiculously long games.

-Terminator armor saves on 2d6.

-Waaay too many different kinds of dice. (Armor Pen: d20+d10+d4+Bleh)

-Waaaaay too many counters and assorted other cardboard bits to keep track of.

Characters that dominated the game. A decent character might get hit by the sixth trooper in combat with him, the rest were dead meat.

Barely moving the whole game. With a 4" move and transports being deathtraps, most models would be lucky to move 16" the whole game.

Scott-S6 wrote:Characters that dominated the game. A decent character might get hit by the sixth trooper in combat with him, the rest were dead meat.

Barely moving the whole game. With a 4" move and transports being deathtraps, most models would be lucky to move 16" the whole game.

I hear you! Although I played Berzerker-heavy Chaos, I would never, ever, ever put my berzerkers in rhinos... I saved them for my cannon-fodder beastmen. Most 2nd ed games seemed to be gunline vs. gunline battles of attrition.

Don't forget everyone's favorite game:

Turn 1:
Player 1 - "I put everything on overwatch."
Player 2 - "I put everything on overwatch."

Turn 2:
Player 1 - "I put everything on overwatch."
Player 2 - "I put everything on overwatch."

Turn 3:
Player 1 - "I put everything on overwatch."
Player 2 - "I put everything on overwatch."

...<snipped>
Turn 18432423:
Player 1 - "I put everything on overwatch."
Player 2 - "Oh screw it." Moves out, loses entire army to overwatch fire from player 1.

People complain about Kill Points... but I guess they don't remember the lists with a bunch of 49 point units that were worth 0 VPs.

Hooray for the 6 victory point 2000 point lists!!

Also... I honestly can't remember if there were other missions because everyone pretty much just seemed to play 12" deployment zone victory point battles.

Centurion nailed it in one. Aside from the overly long psychic phase and stupidly powerful characters (however fun they were), the worst thing about 2nd Ed was Overwatch. I 100% do not miss that.

And if he hadn't've posted that little dialogue, I would have.

The other thing I don't miss is pathetically useless infantry. Could Marines actually shoot in 2nd Ed? I think I used my bolters like 2 times in the whole game. Lasguns? Did they actually case damage? It was all about heavy weapons in 2nd Ed. God I hardly even ever used my special weapons 'sides my 60" range Grenade Launchers (how I miss thee!).

Oh, and Jump Packs that had to scatter every time you jumped them. Yes, jump 10 Assault Marines and then scatter them all. Yeah... never used that rule. Or the negatives to Armour Penetration over range.

willydstyle wrote:People complain about Kill Points... but I guess they don't remember the lists with a bunch of 49 point units that were worth 0 VPs.

And Jervis has taken us back to something more refined but no better with Kill Points. Things haven't adanced... they're just shifted laterally.

willydstyle wrote:Redundant wargear options. Sure there was tons of neato stuff to give your guys... but nobody took power axes because swords gave you parries, why take autoguns when lasguns gave you a -1 saving throw modifier for the same points, etc.

All of these things were proof that 2nd Ed was a game that was too detailed for the scale. Playing games of 40K with 40-100 models a side would never work properly.

Where all these 'redundant' things came into their own is when GW introduced Necromunda. Suddenly, with 8-15 guys on the table at once, all the redundancies shifted away and most (not all) things had a use.

Necromunda is 2nd Ed when 2nd Ed is working.

Fine, be that way. 6th edition is gonna be a Milton Bradley game, with bright blue one-piece space marines, bright green one-piece Orks and bright red one-piece Eldar, all 90% interchangeable, with dice that have little pictures on them instead of pips or numbers.

And the damn thing'll still need several FAQ's.

Completely agreed on overwatch and armour modifiers being terrible, and yet, every time a "2nd ed was great" thread comes along these are the first things to be mentioned...

Rose-Tinted Glasses of 20/20 Hindsight +1.

I mean, I love 2nd Ed, especially compared to the crap that's out now, but I know it was a horribly flawed game and I don't play it, unless I'm playing Necromunda - the scale where 2nd Ed doesn't make you want to claw your eyes out with rusty spoons.

Overwatch (for the reasons mentioned) and Squats. What ugly, horrible little models.

I love this thread!

warpcrafter wrote:Fine, be that way. 6th edition is gonna be a Milton Bradley game, with bright blue one-piece space marines, bright green one-piece Orks and bright red one-piece Eldar, all 90% interchangeable, with dice that have little pictures on them instead of pips or numbers.

Every time this idea comes up, I shake my head. 5th edition actually has more complexity than 4th ed had because of the following reasons:

More detailed rules for ruins and buildings.
Wound Allocation.
Going to ground.
Run.
Ramming.
Outflanking [added via edit].
Morale tests as a result of 25% casualties in any phase (I love it when a squad breaks because a vehicle next to them exploded... very cinematic).

And while a couple of major parts of the rules were simplified (CC and LoS being notable), I think overall the game has reached a good point where it's not as cumbersomely arcane as RT/2nd ed, but is not as mind-numbingly simple as 3rd ed.

Also, if you look at the newer codices that are being released, you start to see a trend of armies that "break the rules" to an extent in interesting ways. I think the Orders system for the new Guard is going to be very flavorful, and is another example of complexity being added to the game through the codices, rather than through the main rules.

@H.B.M.C. I too hated the heavy weapons spam of 2nd ed. The same Ork guy who abused the crap out of VP rules also loved to run nothing-but-heavy-bolter-nobs on a common basis. Or another guy ran a bunch of Cyclone Missile Launcher Wolf Guard... talk about bad games design. Lets make a weapon with limited ammo... and then trust the player not to use all of the ammo at once because it would be way too horribly destructive... For players who never played it, imagine a krak missile with a blast marker... only the blast marker was 12" wide. And since cover didn't give a saving throw, but a to-hit modifier, it didn't matter much of the blast marker missed its target, it would still hit and kill a 12" chunk of army, and no you didn't get a cover save... and then imagine a space wolf army that can take 6 of them.

"First turn advantage" was a huge, huge thing in 2nd ed that I don't miss one tiny bit.

willydstyle wrote:Morale tests as a result of 25% casualties in any phase (I love it when a squad breaks because a vehicle next to them exploded... very cinematic).

People take morale tests where you play? I thought every army was Fearless or `automatically passed' tests, or chose whether or not they passed tests... Where I play, I am the only one who ever seems to take Leadership tests. At Ld10, with the Book of St Broken. It always feels pointless rolling those one or two tests a game.

I do agree with you, to some extent. Fifth edition is a definite improvement over fourth. It is still has its share of stupid bits, but I will take an improvement over nothing. It would be nice if they could take some of the better bits of second to replace some of the worst bits of fifth and make sixth edition a little better again. I will not hold my breath, but stranger things have happened.

Other things from 2nd Edition that I don't miss...

Transport death traps...quite literally. Unless, of course, you happened to have more than one wound, in which case the preferred tactic was to zoom forward 24" (or whatever your max speed was) jump out the transport, take the wound (because what the heck, you had two more) and then unload on your enemy. Preferred tactic of Ogryns, especially with their "auto-hit" rule.

Or even funnier...did you know that Cyclone Missile launchers in 2nd Edition had firing modes besides "all twelve missiles at once?"

Of course, don't forget the vortex grenade that grew to encompass half the table.

I don't miss the terrible one pose plastic miniatures!

Overly long game length, I once made the mistake of trying to play 3000 pts 2nd ed, each turn took at least an hour (player turn not game turn) and in the end kharn (sp?.) the betrayer used his 'im an angry little man' move to eat almost a whole eldar army alone while wraithgaurd munchedmost of a chaos army. In fact I dont miss instant death D cannons or wraithguns either. I also don't miss overwatch (To a point, in that I think that in the current edition it could be much more fun as shooting is much less effective, still think it should have been one of the gaurd orders)

oh and how many of the weapons/equipement/vehicles were available to so many different units, in the rulebook iirc gaurd could have dreadnaughts and land speeders, stuff like that.

My final one for now: transport capacity on a rhino (might nave been a land raider), whereby at least originally a dread could use oneas a transport.

I only got some of it down so far, but anyone can edit this article to include stuff.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Things_We_Don%27t_Miss_about_2nd_Edition_Warhammer_40%2C000

Centurian99 wrote:Of course, don't forget the vortex grenade that grew to encompass half the table.

Oh God, you had to mention the vortex grenade (that every army in existance had one of). That thing was a repressed memory for me. Thankfully virus outbreak/virus grenades were instantly banned from play with my buddies.

Blind grenades. iirc they were about 2pts per model and had the effect of reducing any tyranid/genestealer army to a cc only imperial guard equivalent. I can remember guardians taking out hive tyrants for god's sake!

And the original D-Cannons were a just a tiny bit overpowered too: 4 vortex templates a turn? sure, that'll make for a fun battle.

Sustained fire dice?

Aaaargh! it's all coming back! must..... repress.... memories......

Gah! /dies

malfred wrote:I only got some of it down so far, but anyone can edit this article to include stuff.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Things_We_Don%27t_Miss_about_2nd_Edition_Warhammer_40%2C000

Haha... thanks Malfred... that's kind of hilarious.

Chaos lord in terminator armour with all 4 chaos marks and Gate (IIRC power fist and combi bolter weapons)

This guy could teleport arond the table, demolishing a unit per turn, and was virtually indestructible.

Super heavies that weren't restricted.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Centurion nailed it in one. Aside from the overly long psychic phase and stupidly powerful characters (however fun they were), the worst thing about 2nd Ed was Overwatch. I 100% do not miss that.

Well, I posit thats because you and Centurion didn't know how to play it (and still don't). Overwatch was combined with FIRING ARCS, so a unit could only watch 90 degrees of board. The scenario:

Overwatch army 1
Overwatch army 2

...

Infinity

Is absurd. All one had to do was outflank them outside the overwatch ark. It was a very good tactic, and units sitting on overwatch weren't moving either... It was also easy to move up a single target unit, say 2 units of 16 gaunts instead of just 1 at 32 models,... they can only overwatch at 1 of them, and the next turn, sure charge...

You overwwatch complainers just don't get it, and still don't.

I dont miss the old assault cannon, 3D3 krak missiles? Boy that was nasty. Especially on Space WOlves who could bring entire units of terminators with them...

Playing 8 hours and the game ending in a draw.

Close Combat and Overwatch.

#1 thing I don't miss???

Squats.

Heh, at least second edition made an impression, gone 10 years and people are still whining about it....

It did have it's flaws though...
Ravenwing landspeeders with extra vehicle powerfields doing pop-ups for example. It was like running hurdles in a wheelchair.
And close combat was handled...akwardly... It made initiative entirely redundant and # of attacks nearly so.

2nd ed. was at it's best when you had two players who both played the setting instead of the rules. Rare then, even rarer now...

TOOO.....MUCH......CARD