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The thread on new editions got me thinking - in the various games I played, when did I think was the "best" time?

A lot of people say it's your first edition of a game that is your favourite, but for me that wasn't really the case.
40K - started in 2e and had a lot of fun, but I think the peak of the game for me was late 4e-early 5e, and if I had to pick one, I'd pick early 5e before the codex releases made it a bit less fun to play. The 3e system had matured into something pretty complete, I had a really fun codex in the late 4e Ork codex and I was having a blast playing the game with loads of build variety and new kits to play with. 6e and 7e bloated the system out without improving it, and introduced formations and superheavies as core game concepts and I really hate formations especially.
WFB - Started in 5e and again, had a lot of fun, though even I as a teen could see that my Slann Mage Priest was crazy over-powered. I think late 6e, when all the books were out, was the best time. I had so much fun playing narrative and siege games back then and although 40K was by far more popular I was really in love with the Old World. I was really optimistic about 7e and liked it at first, but the infamous trio of bad army books really soured me on the edition sadly. I was again optimistic for 8e but just a mix of things really put me off - stupid terrain rules, overpowered magic, massive unwieldy units...
Old World it seems to me is not an improvement on any of these, and they increased the base sizes so petulantly I'm not even gonna give it a fair go!
Warmachine and Hordes - I was an early adopter of this locally, got in in 1e. 2e was by far the best version of the game for me, though late in the edition they started introducing "theme lists" which were their version of formations and they were really bad. But you could just ignore them which I did. Really tight, fun game where I felt I could build a list from pretty much anything and it was down to how cleverly I used it on the table whether I won or not. 3e doubled down on the stuff I wasn't liking in late 2e, and introduced really massive models I didn't feel fit with the game and I dropped it, sadly. Really a dramatic fumble - that game was riding high and they just messed up.
Kings of War - I started again in 1e, but didn't get much of a chance to play. 2e I think is the best version of this for me - still has very generic WFB inspired armies, allows historical armies, and eventually got pretty decent siege rules. It's got better balance than any edition of WFB despite having some issues with flying units and so on. 3e leaned more into Mantic's own miniatures and also into formations (again, what is with these awful trends that seem to sweep our hobby) and seemed to over-complicate the game whose core strength was simplicity. 4e is continuing that trend, though it is a bit simpler than it was I think. Also, I must say, the enthusiasm in the community for very sparse multibases really hurts the look of the game - I much prefer a packed block of troops to a scattering of dudes clambering over a ruin or something, because it is weird to have large scenery pieces moving around a battlefield where they don't fit in.
LOTR - The Big Blue Book version is my first version, and it's the only case where that's my favourite version as well. The Hobbit added too much silliness and fiddlyness and MESBG leans heavily into "formation" style fixed lists that you might be seeing are kind of a bugbear of mine. I think the Big Blue Book is basically perfect as it goes.
One Page Rules - Very similar to KoW, I found that after 2.5 they got too tied up in their own ideas and stopped being as good as a way to use my existing collection, and they seemed to be adding more and more complexity to a system whose virtue was simplicity, so I downloaded my PDFs and only play 2.5.

I think that's all the games with multiple editions that I play - I mean I love mordheim, OG Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic and a smattering of other games which are one off books, but those are the ones that I followed from edition to edition and eventually settled on a "favourite" from.

I'd be really curious to hear from others who've been through many edition changes, and the reasons why you like or dislike certain things. I'd especially be interested to hear about stuff I haven't experienced myself - later editions of 40K, Age of Sigmar as a whole deal (that's an interesting one because it changed so much!) and things like Kill Team and Warcry.

I think my first Wargame was BattleTech, I had no mechs... just some planes, Long Tom artillery and a handful of Savannah Masters.

I can't tell you what edition it was, but people still played with LAMs and Robotech minis.

☆☆☆

40k I played from 3rd to 6th, and then returned for 9th Edition. I haven't seen the nightmare that was 7th for myself, only heard the stories from around the campfire.

☆☆☆

I played all the specialist games, Necromunda, BFG, Inquisitor, Mordheim... except Blood Bowl... not sure why.

☆☆☆

Played the hell out of Babylon 5 Wars and Fleet Action. Around that time I also annoyed the feth out of others in Flames of War... no matter what theater of war, I always enjoyed a good impossible to kill Naval Bombardment.

☆☆☆

Ugh. Warmachine. I remember the promises the company made when it first came out, how they blasted GW for making plastic models and having a game system where Infantry could kill tanks.

Then they threw that all away, and I stopped playing.

☆☆☆

I've only seen OPR mentioned online or offhandedly discussed between people playing Kill Team or 40k. I've never seen anyone actually play it.

☆☆☆

Looking back, I'd say the late 90's were the best years of Wargames. We had new stuff, old stuff, and plenty of good times.

I would agree with OP and postulate that usually a game is best after it has seen some polishing but before they start changing the things you picked the game up for in the first place, so usually 2nd edition.

It is a sad reality that sales tend to stagnate when quality peaks and everyone who likes the game already has everything they need, so they start messing it up chasing broader appeal.

It’s difficult to say, because I’ve so many fond memories of the time I was playing certain editions and games.

So is it really the rules I recall fondly, or the good company during the games?

For instance, I prefer my narrative stuff. Writing a campaign, or a self-developing narrative game like Necromunda or Mordheim.

So, when I’ve gathered a merry band of fellow idiots happily on the same wavelength? I’m going to have a better and more fondly remembered experience than where things are played more competitively.

Likewise, if someone likes their competitive play and really gets a kick out of really pushing their skills and knowledge, are they going to look back fondly on a heavily narrative campaign I ran? I’d wager probably not.

But, 2nd Edition Space Marine. It was the most affordable game for a teenage oik, and looked superb. And as all my opponents at the time were around the same place on the learning curve? We had a great time. Everyone could add to their army at pretty much pocket money prices. Especially if like a sensible teenage oik, you didn’t fully man your stands!

There's often a difference between when the game is at its best and when the experience of the game is at its best. I'll pick on the obvious example of Warmachine. Undoubtably its best times were Mk2, when there was so much faith in the game and drive to make it better and better. The community the tournaments everything was peak.

Mk3 by comparison falls far short of that but not because of the game itself. Honestly, I find Mk2 to be kind of garbage by comparison. The big stompy robots had non-functional rules and a couple factions got to have all the fun the game had to offer while the rest.... eh? Mk3 to me was a far better game but really seemed to hit at time when people had had enough of Warmachine and were looking for other things.

As for other games. 40k is something where 10th is the first time I've enjoyed it in any real capacity and we have a great community so that's kind of a no brainer.

Malifaux and Infinity are kind of in an odd place for me. I would say that the excitement around both was probably in the M2E and N3 eras followed by really successful launches of M3E and N4 that got a lot of people into the game but both have suffered from being 3rd or 4th favorites without a real champion. Their latest editions have been weird for me personally as their core rules I think are great by the model rules for the stuff that excites me has not gotten me terribly excited.

Peak of a game & my favorite editions probably don't align. So I'll just worry about what my favorite editions are.

Some of the stuff I regularly play;

WHFB - My favorite is 3e. Still play it about once/twice a year. Though I did have plenty of fun 4th-6th. Not sure what my opinion on what Old World (aka 9th ed amongst those I play with) is yet as I've only played about 7 games.

Age of Sigmar - my favorite is 3rd ed. This current edition? They just crapped all over the Allies rules & I don't really like how forces are constructed.

40k? I may have started in RT. But my favorite editions/eras are tied: 3-5th & 9th/10th.

Flames of War (WWII) - 3rd edition. Though 4th is ok & I've had plenty of fun, I still have more options in 3rd than I have in 4th even after all these years of this edition.

Bolt Action - All editions are good

BattleTech - It's....Battletech. It hasn't drastically changed (mechanically) since the day I picked it up back in the 80s. Sure, a few tweaks here & there, but it's nothing like 40k wich has been at least 4 almost completely different games since I started.

I think 5th was peak 40k. It had issues, but a solid core.

For battletech I liked it with the first lost tech upgrade, but before the clans returned.

Car Wars my group ended up restricting to the first 2 Uncle Al’s catalogs. The later ones just started getting crazy.

2001 / 2004 when the vehicle design rules came out. They seemed to encapsulate the wackiness of 40k - you COULD build a ridiculous machine - but it would also cost ridiculous points - it seemed fairly balanced, and allow you to go nuts if you wanted to.

In the same vein, 4th edition Tyranids (the super customisable one). It seemed to capture exactly what Tyranids would do - adapt & evolve. Of course, making my army stronger/better didn't exactly hurt either....

 LunarSol wrote:
There's often a difference between when the game is at its best and when the experience of the game is at its best. I'll pick on the obvious example of Warmachine. Undoubtably its best times were Mk2, when there was so much faith in the game and drive to make it better and better. The community the tournaments everything was peak.

Mk3 by comparison falls far short of that but not because of the game itself. Honestly, I find Mk2 to be kind of garbage by comparison. The big stompy robots had non-functional rules and a couple factions got to have all the fun the game had to offer while the rest.... eh? Mk3 to me was a far better game but really seemed to hit at time when people had had enough of Warmachine and were looking for other things.

Indeed, I am usually astounded when I see the common opinion "mk2" was best, as mk3 quite objectively improved so many aspects of the game that mk2 was struggling with (warjacks, morale, abundance of NPEs and oh do many quality of life improvements!).

But I understand now that this opinion is not really about rules quality or even quality of the game in general, but on much more intangible vibes, often local.

For me peak Warmachine was at the end of mk3, with all final patches in place, formats like Brawlmachine..alas, for any publisher a new edition is always better than a good edition :,(

40K: 8th edition
My gaming group still got enough games and mini-tournaments in to still get a hang of some tactics of the game, the rules were straightforward, GW seemed to care about actually improving the game; and the new rules mostly improved on stuff we had disliked about 5th-7th edition. With strats and the rework of CC the downtime was reduced and there was actually something to think about in your opponent's turn.
9th felt utterly unnecessary to us, brought in hardly any relevant changes but tried to force you into new missions and codizes while ramping up the lethality of the game even more - which was already the key problem of 8th. Also releasing it during Covid really alienated us. I think I got a crusade campaign of about 8 games in in 9th, but by the end of the edition we had switched to OPR.

LOTR:
Well, in the Blue Book era I had the most games by far, but everything I read and played about the edition before the current one felt good, so I'd say the game for me peaks right before the current edition. With GW being too lazy to even translate the current edition I never even took a look into it. I'm still annoyed they cancelled cm in favor of inches at some point, so I won't start to learn the game again in another language...

Star Trek Attack Wing:
2014/15, right when we started. I was really hyped about that game, eagerly awaited every new release for my chosen factions and went after every limited OP release. And then they just stopped releasing stuff.
I had a new hype when I did a Solo-Alliance campaign last year. It still is a very strong game, possibly my favourite.

OPR and Star Wars Armada haven't really changed while I played it. OPR has some patches every half year, but they are rather small reshuffling. It's annoying to relearn the names of special rules yet again, but when you get into the details it's clear most stuff stays the same all the time. Maybe playing OPR IS our peak 40K experience
And I started with Armada two years ago, half a year before they cancelled it... So, the game is stable now, it is my most played game currently. It would be more awesome if it was Trek, but you have to take what you have players for.

I tend to look at the hobby as a whole and I think every year I've been in it since the 90s has been better than the last. There are more, better, and more affordable minis and games than ever before and the hobby continues to grow.

That said, a few observations about specific games.

-Based on what I'm seeing of the new edition, KoW may have peaked for me in 3rd edition. I could be wrong, but 4th seems already to be the edition for more restricted army lists, higher prices, all in on multibasing, etc. All things that make me less interested as someone who liked the rules and openness of KoW but had little interest in the Mantic ecosystem or factions. I realize some folks feel that 2nd is superior for the same reasons. My feelings may be colored by the fact that I really liked the 3.5 red book and 3rd was the edition I played the most of and had a good campaign in.

-I do think that 90s Necromunda and Mordheim are the peak implementations of the 90s WHFB/40K mechanics. Limited to small Warbands and stripped of unnecessary weight, the mechanics really shine in these games and produce the fast and fun experience that the larger versions struggled to create.

-I'm still digging the current version of OPR. It still covers all my old minis and the ease Army Builder means I'll probably continue to use whatever the current version is. Our group plays allot of OPR.

-It's not necessarily a new edition, but I think that basic "Revised" Song of Blades and Heroes is a better game for me than the Advanced version. Not to say Advanced is bad, but I love the beer and pretzels experience of basic and it has excellent supplements to a degree that Advanced never got.

-I'm still digging the current version of OPR. It still covers all my old minis and the ease Army Builder means I'll probably continue to use whatever the current version is. Our group plays allot of OPR.

There's a nice OPR scene chugging along in the UK too. I came to it as 3.0 launched, as a solution to never finishing a big game of 40k, and really enjoyed it. I agree with some of the above posters that granularity is creeping back in with 3.5 — which is fun, but it's a slippery slope from that to flying in the face of its 'simple wargaming' premise.

40k 3rd edition was my favourite art-wise and army size-wise, I fell out of the game during 4th, and rejoining in 9th as a much older adult I had this massive feeling of 'army bloat'. Reduced points costs to sell more models, with 2k remaining an army size standard and 1k often leading to swingy, unbalanced games. That's how the modern game is, and I get it — it's why I gravitated to OPR. However, I feel like 10th has been the best yet from a miniature sculpts point of view.

As time goes on, games like OPR get too many people crying "If I spam this one undercosted unit 16 times in my list the game is UNBALANCED?!! This is a failure of the game and not me as a human being at all! If presented with a more efficient option I have to take it because I am well rounded and healthy!"

And then they have to keep fiddling with it to try and create a systemic approach to preventing this sort of stuff and it gradually makes the game more complicated and annoying to interact with. A lot of games start simple with relatively "do what you want" ethos and then gradually get whined into "tightening up" due to people who can't stop themselves abusing an undercosted option if it exists.

I used to be more sympathetic to the "balance is the job of the games designer" but when you're talking about a free game that is trying to allow for maximum compatibility with 30 years of model collections it's just an unreasonable expectation. It's a bit different if you're charging 50 quid for your rulebook and then 20 quid per army, then I think, yeah, put a bit of work in for me please. But when looking at free games or at least very cheap games I think some of the onus on having a fun game has to be on us as players.

WHFB 6th edition is probably the most complete version of the game ever developed by GW. It had rules for Skirmish, Campaigns everything. Yeah there were a few broken builds but nothing so extreme as later editions, or earlier ones for that matter.

I'll also give an endorsement of Blue Book Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle game. Easily one of the best games GW has ever produced.

In WHFB 6e everyone except Chaos Dwarves got an army book too, and that was the last edition that ever happened in.

I can't even recall what was the most over powered stuff in WFB 6e. Second Dwarf army book had some filth in it with boring gunline lists, for sure. But I always preferred the first book because the whole thing is told to you by a grumpy hammerer.

You could do annoying stuff with skirmishers a lot in that edition, lots of march blocking and other shenanigans, but I don't recall it being game breaking.

I don't think the books were that bad in 8e either, but not everyone got one and the core rules were the issue there. I've often thought if you got rid of the Horde rule and Steadfast and just kept step up and maybe put 6e or 7e magic onto 8e you'd have a pretty decent game. I liked Step Up as a mechanic, I think it made sense, but as usual it was coupled with Steadfast and Horde pushing everything too far in one direction.

I know it's petty but my most hated rules for WFB 8th were the terrain rules - just ridiculous from any kind of narrative or immersive perspective unless you're fighting all your battles in the Chaos Wastes.

Edit: Cyel and Lunarsol: Mk3 pretty much killed the game, so I dunno you think it could be the peak experience? The release was rushed, the rules required loads of errata that meant the book was out of date extremely soon after they released it. Some factions like Skorne were treated very poorly by the update. And they moved heavily into theme lists as a model which was just very unpopular with people who liked the older more free style of list building, which was now penalised. It also meant if you hadn't bought stuff in the themes PP came up with, suddenly you didn't have much of an army any more, and might have to buy a bunch more models to actually get one on the table. And that was coupled with really bad supply issues here in Europe, so suddenly you need to buy models but you can't actually find them anywhere. And of course they burned their biggest advocates by closing the Press Gang program, which had been doing a lot of the heavy lifting with events. Around then as well the game started to shift more toward 2D terrain which just looks really ugly and is offputting to new players. And didn't they also delete their forums?

So the core rules could have been great (and they probably were very good) but the entire ecosystem of army building, actually collecting the damn miniatures, community events and online presence was a total mess. And the game at least while I still paid attention to it was not more balanced in Mk3, though I can believe it might have gotten better with patching and so on. But you can hardly be surprised that people didn't wait around for that given the list of errors or anti-consumer moves PP had done in the shift to Mk3? And then they End Timesed the game, like they were speedrunning GW in the Kirby era or something. I still can't believe they did that, I really liked the old setting and had run RPG campaigns and all sorts in it. Now my factions don't even really exist any more. Insert joke about only having two nickels but it being weird that it happened twice here I suppose.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that once patched and once factions like Skorne had been rebalanced, the game was decent. They were always pretty good at making a solid and fun game. But all that other nonsense (and for me, especially the changes to army building which are 100% a part of the rules that just got worse from my POV) really badly damaged the game to the point where every shop in Germany had PP stuff selling for half price by the end.

My "Peak" was when Specialist Games died. This was after 40K 5th edition, I think. When they were not supporting Specialist Games there was a rise in non-GW games.

A lot of folks were doing experimental stuff with the Specialist Games. For former Portent/Warseer users, it was the time of the Firebase E-zine.

My second "Peak" was with the creation of Osprey Games and the Blue Book wargame series. That opened a lot of doors to new games, periods, and styles of games.

 Da Boss wrote:

Edit: Cyel and Lunarsol: Mk3 pretty much killed the game, so I dunno you think it could be the peak experience? The release was rushed, the rules required loads of errata that meant the book was out of date extremely soon after they released it. Some factions like Skorne were treated very poorly by the update. And they moved heavily into theme lists as a model which was just very unpopular with people who liked the older more free style of list building, which was now penalised. It also meant if you hadn't bought stuff in the themes PP came up with, suddenly you didn't have much of an army any more, and might have to buy a bunch more models to actually get one on the table. And that was coupled with really bad supply issues here in Europe, so suddenly you need to buy models but you can't actually find them anywhere. And of course they burned their biggest advocates by closing the Press Gang program, which had been doing a lot of the heavy lifting with events. Around then as well the game started to shift more toward 2D terrain which just looks really ugly and is offputting to new players. And didn't they also delete their forums?

So the core rules could have been great (and they probably were very good) but the entire ecosystem of army building, actually collecting the damn miniatures, community events and online presence was a total mess. And the game at least while I still paid attention to it was not more balanced in Mk3, though I can believe it might have gotten better with patching and so on. But you can hardly be surprised that people didn't wait around for that given the list of errors or anti-consumer moves PP had done in the shift to Mk3? And then they End Timesed the game, like they were speedrunning GW in the Kirby era or something. I still can't believe they did that, I really liked the old setting and had run RPG campaigns and all sorts in it. Now my factions don't even really exist any more. Insert joke about only having two nickels but it being weird that it happened twice here I suppose.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that once patched and once factions like Skorne had been rebalanced, the game was decent. They were always pretty good at making a solid and fun game. But all that other nonsense (and for me, especially the changes to army building which are 100% a part of the rules that just got worse from my POV) really badly damaged the game to the point where every shop in Germany had PP stuff selling for half price by the end.

That was ultimately my point, that the experience of Mk2 was far better than Mk3, but Mk3 was a far far better game. Ultimatley nearly every complaint I ever hear about it was very much a problem in Mk2. 2D terrain was all people would play on in Mk2. Skorne was terrible in MK2. Themes were increasingly dominant in Mk2. The main problem just seemed to be that people started taking issue with them in Mk3. Part of that is likely expectations. People had an incredible amount of faith in perfect balance at the time. I think a bigger part of it was an excuse. Mk2 was an exhausting treadmill and an excuse to hop off was enticing. I do think the real answer is just that 8th edition promised to be better and a LOT of Warmachine's audience was spurned 40k players. I'm not sure I've seen a community so eager to find grievances to declare the game dead. It really felt like a lot of people just wanted to play other things, but felt like they couldn't as long as they were trapped in the Warmachine ecosphere.

Unpopular opinion - The first editions were peak, regardless of GW game. Rest is just capitalism doing what it does best, reselling you what you already had, time and time again. Second editions are usually tolerable, at times they even manage to "fix" the worst aspects of 1st edition, but anything beyond 2nd edition is already a different game than the original 1st edition most times, and rarely for the better

Original Space Hulk. 2nd Edition Blood Bowl. 1st and 2nd edition 40k (1st edition for the skirmish RPG, 2nd for wargaming). 1st and second edition of Space Marine. 1st edition of KT21 (Elliott Hamer's baby is already being watered down by committee). etc etc

Kinda?

The Hobby aspect prevents full agreement.

Yes, capitalism is capitalism and they always want you to buy more. No argument there.

But for a hobby that involves collecting, building and painting models, your collection is going to grow over time. And with it, you’re eventually going to want to be able to play with more of said collection in a single game.

I don’t defend a set three or even four year cycle. But, I will acknowledge that a shake up or refinement, whether main rules or Codex equivalent can also bring a fresh challenge. So it’s not necessarily unwelcome as a thing

Where I think GW needs to do better is to rely less on edition changes, but keep up the Errata and FAQ to keep things tidy.

Tauist is right, really. We know that edition releases are massive sales drivers for GW. It's not even just about the books themselves, GW sells a lot more models too each time they release a new edition, and each faction sells a lot more models for a bit when they get a new codex, regardless of anything else.

It's why just polishing HH2.0 was never on the table, for example, even though improving on it was what much of what the community wanted. GW needs the publicity of a full edition table flip to drive the hype.

See my last bit in that post

Yes, in fact I intended my post specifically to reply to that. GW will not do it.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:

Edit: Cyel and Lunarsol: Mk3 pretty much killed the game, so I dunno you think it could be the peak experience? The release was rushed, the rules required loads of errata that meant the book was out of date extremely soon after they released it. Some factions like Skorne were treated very poorly by the update. And they moved heavily into theme lists as a model which was just very unpopular with people who liked the older more free style of list building, which was now penalised. It also meant if you hadn't bought stuff in the themes PP came up with, suddenly you didn't have much of an army any more, and might have to buy a bunch more models to actually get one on the table. And that was coupled with really bad supply issues here in Europe, so suddenly you need to buy models but you can't actually find them anywhere. And of course they burned their biggest advocates by closing the Press Gang program, which had been doing a lot of the heavy lifting with events. Around then as well the game started to shift more toward 2D terrain which just looks really ugly and is offputting to new players. And didn't they also delete their forums?

So the core rules could have been great (and they probably were very good) but the entire ecosystem of army building, actually collecting the damn miniatures, community events and online presence was a total mess. And the game at least while I still paid attention to it was not more balanced in Mk3, though I can believe it might have gotten better with patching and so on. But you can hardly be surprised that people didn't wait around for that given the list of errors or anti-consumer moves PP had done in the shift to Mk3? And then they End Timesed the game, like they were speedrunning GW in the Kirby era or something. I still can't believe they did that, I really liked the old setting and had run RPG campaigns and all sorts in it. Now my factions don't even really exist any more. Insert joke about only having two nickels but it being weird that it happened twice here I suppose.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that once patched and once factions like Skorne had been rebalanced, the game was decent. They were always pretty good at making a solid and fun game. But all that other nonsense (and for me, especially the changes to army building which are 100% a part of the rules that just got worse from my POV) really badly damaged the game to the point where every shop in Germany had PP stuff selling for half price by the end.

That was ultimately my point, that the experience of Mk2 was far better than Mk3, but Mk3 was a far far better game. Ultimatley nearly every complaint I ever hear about it was very much a problem in Mk2. 2D terrain was all people would play on in Mk2. Skorne was terrible in MK2. Themes were increasingly dominant in Mk2. The main problem just seemed to be that people started taking issue with them in Mk3. Part of that is likely expectations. People had an incredible amount of faith in perfect balance at the time. I think a bigger part of it was an excuse. Mk2 was an exhausting treadmill and an excuse to hop off was enticing. I do think the real answer is just that 8th edition promised to be better and a LOT of Warmachine's audience was spurned 40k players. I'm not sure I've seen a community so eager to find grievances to declare the game dead. It really felt like a lot of people just wanted to play other things, but felt like they couldn't as long as they were trapped in the Warmachine ecosphere.

For me, it was waiting to see if they changed direction on the bad decisions I saw them making toward the end of 2e, or if they doubled down. And in my view, they doubled down. I also think army building is such a huge part of a game that when you make it crap (with theme lists/formations/whatever) then you really badly impact the game. I don't think a game with that style of list building is good, full stop.

 Da Boss wrote:
As time goes on, games like OPR get too many people crying "If I spam this one undercosted unit 16 times in my list the game is UNBALANCED?!! This is a failure of the game and not me as a human being at all! If presented with a more efficient option I have to take it because I am well rounded and healthy!"

.

OPR does have some simple rules for army composition that greatly limit spamming.

Peak was over 40 years ago (: when I had time for RPG's.

Another peak started 10 years ago (: when I retired and had time to paint mini's! Solo miniature games, like "Five Leagues from the Borderlands".
(If you're new to 5L and are new to miniatures, start with their "Deep Below" ruleset. Review here: https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=116288.90 )

ObPic:

 Da Boss wrote:


For me, it was waiting to see if they changed direction on the bad decisions I saw them making toward the end of 2e, or if they doubled down. And in my view, they doubled down. I also think army building is such a huge part of a game that when you make it crap (with theme lists/formations/whatever) then you really badly impact the game. I don't think a game with that style of list building is good, full stop.

My comment is from my point of view and this point of view judges the game purely on the quality of its rules. I don't really care about community dramas, business decisions, background noise etc, I usually don't even know about these, I want to play the game not listen to rumours. I only care if the game is good and mk3 is objectively better than mk2, fixing many of its problems without adding new, worse ones.

I wish other players also judged the game by its rules, as we could still be happily playing it with the models everybody already owned instead of getting miffed at the company and using it as a reason not to play.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
WHFB 6th edition is probably the most complete version of the game ever developed by GW. It had rules for Skirmish, Campaigns everything. Yeah there were a few broken builds but nothing so extreme as later editions, or earlier ones for that matter.

It also had a 150 page community FAQ and different comp rules in every town, making it utterly impenetrable for new players wanting to come in in the second half of the edition. It's interesting that most folks' favourite editions of both 40k and WHFB existed in the time when GW's policy was to just not touch the rules after publication, at all, until the next edition. And now we can't survive a month with an undercosted unit in the meta.

Cyel wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:


For me, it was waiting to see if they changed direction on the bad decisions I saw them making toward the end of 2e, or if they doubled down. And in my view, they doubled down. I also think army building is such a huge part of a game that when you make it crap (with theme lists/formations/whatever) then you really badly impact the game. I don't think a game with that style of list building is good, full stop.

My comment is from my point of view and this point of view judges the game purely on the quality of its rules. I don't really care about community dramas, business decisions, background noise etc, I usually don't even know about these, I want to play the game not listen to rumours. I only care if the game is good and mk3 is objectively better than mk2, fixing many of its problems without adding new, worse ones.

I wish other players also judged the game by its rules, as we could still be happily playing it with the models everybody already owned instead of getting miffed at the company and using it as a reason not to play.

My point of view means subjective, you do know that right? Both of us are discussing our subjective POV on the game, you can't say it's "objectively better". Theme lists becoming the standard instead of going away is part of the game rules, and a terrible one for a lot of players. Do you understand that people were put off from playing by themes, and it was a rules choice, not some background noise?

And poor balance at the start of the edition for entire factions is also a problem with the rules of the game, not with the community or background noise. You're expecting them to fix the problems that exist in Mk2 but they don't and some get worse, I dunno I just don't share your opinion at all.

I wish PP had made better decisions and not torpedoed their game, because it was a great game and I have a lot of fond memories of the setting and the time I spent with it.

Well, the change from (iconic to the game) warjacks being useless and nobody wanting to take them to warjacks getting new rules and being useful again is kind of an objective improvement. There was a series of such changes that just made a lot of sense and were improvements in a pretty objective way.

If they introduced a change that would make, say, an entire category of models totally unplayable it would be pretty objectively bad design. Not really a subjective opinion "I like my cavalry playable, but my friends actually prefer them to have rules that don't make sense and that make playing with cavalry a pain".

And yeah of course that we may argue that tastes vary and somebody likes apples while another being kicked in the balls, but all in all the superiority of apples over being kicked in the balls is not something that you generally discuss along the lines of "well it depends and is a subjective matter of taste".

You continuously show you just can't understand other people's point of view, and that you consider your own point of view to be some kind of objective truth.

And you're just ignoring the points I'm making about rules I thought were bad as well.

Your analogy at the end also shows that you think people who disagree with you are stupid, which is just unpleasant.