I started playing WH40K right when 6th edition began and I've always heard about how previous editions were better/worse then the current 6th edition. This has always got me curious as I have no knowledge of what the previous editions were like other then that vehicles didn't have hull points before. What were the older editions like? What were the parts that you liked/disliked? And if, in your opinion, a certain edition should be brought back, which one would it be?

RT for me.

I began with orks when they sported punker do's and carried beer-keg Heavy Plasma Guns and bolters.

It's been a long long ride, though Orks are still my main and favorite army.


6th to me feels like an attempt to revive 2nd edition, in some ways.

RT was frankly a disorganized mess, gameplay wise. It was more a roleplaying game which used models.

I have the 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition rulebooks sitting on my shelf (never bought 6th actually, the people I usually play with have enough copies to go around). Never actually played a 3rd edition game.

I have heard wondrous things about the vehicle damage charts in 1st/2nd edition. I really wish I could try them out, just once.

I liked 5th, heresy though that may be. I wouldn't have minded staying in 5th, though 6th is ok.


I would like some of the old ork wackiness back though.

Madboyz charts
Orky cybernetics tables
Squig-brained dreads...

 Ascalam wrote:
I liked 5th, heresy though that may be. I wouldn't have minded staying in 5th, though 6th is ok.


I would like some of the old ork wackiness back though.

Madboyz charts
Orky cybernetics tables
Squig-brained dreads...

Let's see what goodies we get with the new codex.

I started in 5th, so I can't say much about the other editions. I do say, though, that I really enjoy 6th. I'm not a fan of some things (you can't please everyone, all the time) but I do enjoy it. Of the two, I prefer 6th, because it seems more entertaining (to me, at least) in both the casual and semi-competitive set, but I play more casual, so that may bias me.

Looking forward to it, as long as they don't totally feth it up

 Ascalam wrote:
Looking forward to it, as long as they don't totally feth it up

Squiggoths and Stompas as part of standard 40k.

 Ascalam wrote:
RT for me.
...
RT was frankly a disorganized mess, gameplay wise. It was more a roleplaying game which used models.

Is RT basically the '1st Edition'?

 Kain wrote:

 Ascalam wrote:
Looking forward to it, as long as they don't totally feth it up

Squiggoths and Stompas as part of standard 40k.

Wouldn't shock me I'd be good with it.

 Ascalam wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Ascalam wrote:
Looking forward to it, as long as they don't totally feth it up

Squiggoths and Stompas as part of standard 40k.

Wouldn't shock me I'd be good with it.

And also Ghazghkull getting a monstrous creature statline since every weedier boss has S5 T5 too.

 gnoise wrote:

 Ascalam wrote:
RT for me.
...
RT was frankly a disorganized mess, gameplay wise. It was more a roleplaying game which used models.

Is RT basically the '1st Edition'?

Yup. 1st edition 40K was Rogue Trader.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Warhammer_40,000#.UaWOaEB1-XY

I played Laserburn before that I was also into Fantasy Battle at the time. The early WHFB books had some AWESOME artwork too...

I started the same week 4th came out, and as a casual gamer I feel it has just gotten better and better.

6th to me just plays well and spawns a lot of fun things with the randomness. If my opponent and I aren't up for the randomness we just opt not to do it.

I'm happy with 6th because I've just started getting okay at the new rules and having been playing since RT, I've realised that rules come and go but in the end, YOU make the game fun... (Wow, I've been in marketing too long!)

There are some good things about 6th, but I think 5th edges it out. 5th edition only had one really awful thing - wound wrapping - but was otherwise fine. 6th edition fixed a lot of things that only sort of needed fixing, while breaking a lot of things that were working very well.

In the end, I kind of feel like 6th edition is like a new version of windows - great in theory, but so poorly executed in some places that it's better to wait until its first service pack comes out. Thankfully, they've been doing a very good job of getting FAQs and codices out, but I feel like we're probably going to have to wait for 7th to get some of the stuff broken in 6th sorted out.

I said 3rd only because I really liked the 3.5 codex supplement: Craftworld Eldar. We shall see if Codex: Eldar will breath new "life" into my Iyanden army.

Overall 5th and 6th are better games that run smoother, have more balance, and in general don't get boring as fast due to objectives, etc.

I actually like alot of the stuff 6th brought in with the flyers/FMC but I look forward to 7th when they tweak rules and hopefully even out the assault vs shooting balance.

I was a fan of 3rd. I started getting into 40k a month or so before 3rd came out. Didn't get to play before the 3rd release.

3rd was awesome. Maybe not the rules themselves but the edition was the best.

Chapter Approved provided all kinds of awesome upgrades and armies and units.

Codexes were full of character and there were minidexes!

Codex: Craftworld Eldar, Codex: Armeggedon, Codex: Chaos 3.5!!!!!!(greatest codex ever written).

Terminators got their first invul save! Vehicle Design rules! Scarabs weren't swarms and could explode!

No Tau!!!! Sisters had rules in the main book! Tyranids got sexy! DIAZ DAEMONETTES!

Gamesday had events and stuff worth traveling to see! FW had like 4 items for sale!

Plastic Dreadnoughts?!!! NO FETHING WAY!!!!

Now everything is... Oh look... new big thing. Oh hey... Hardcover overpriced codexes.... Wow... more Space Marines....

I played mostly 5th, tried a bit of 4th.

4th ed codexes were pretty great, along with their 3.5 predecessors; lots of customization, you could make every force truly unique, fighting the way you wanted while being fluffy and somewhat killy. 5th had very, very bland codexes with only a few suitable lists (still the case for most 5th ed books), and the way vehicles worked annoyed the feth out of me. Actually killing even a rhino was such a chore.

6th ed feels a bit more lethal; vehicles are more easily killed, especially by dedicated anti-tank units, and because there's less invincible motor pools, infantry tend to go down more often. Feels bloodier, deadlier, riskier, which is what I've enjoyed. GW business policy, however, in 6th is frakking garbage, and there's many old things I miss dearly from the business side. The only business decision that's genuinely better is the rate of codex release.

Overall, I'm liking 6th the most, but it's very dependent on how the codexes continue to develop, and how much GW proceeds to irritate me.

6th. I am so glad that fecking 5th with its "WHO CAN SPAM MOAR TRANSPORTZ" spam is gone.

6th. Because that's the edition I started playing

dementedwombat wrote:
I have heard wondrous things about the vehicle damage charts in 1st/2nd edition. I really wish I could try them out, just once.

You can! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2849355/40k%202nd%20Edition/45857409-Warhammer-40k-Battle-Bible-1-51.pdf

For me it's 2nd, although not perhaps because it was 'the best' per se. I guess for me it's that I prefer smaller games with greater detail - even in 6th we tend to prefer smaller games more, particularly enjoying Kill Team games. For me 2nd had its OP WTF moments, though this was more due to some weapon/unit rules or else the general freedom it gave when writing an army list - which people abused to create uber-units of death, when perhaps they'd have been better off staying true to the background.

In a way 2nd had a great basic rules set, back when you could split fire as you wished and your vehicles sponsons could target other units (the shock, the horror!). I also preferred the missions and the flexibility of the game.

Other editions have added things I've liked but in many ways 2nd Edition remains the 'archetype' for Codex books (barely changing bar the 3rd/3.5 dex's) and now (with 6th) more random elements. Also 2nd Edition is back when you didn't need that many models in an army and before people demanded to use bigger armies, which in turn has led to continued points drops - there's only so low the points value of a Tactical Marine can go before we start seeing 4pts Orks

As a platoon-scale skirmish game, 2nd Edition is still great IMHO. In a way I wish GW would release an archive of prior editions for people to use as they wish, although they can be found elsewhere

I started towards the beginning of 5th ed. I've enjoyed both 5th and 6th; there's only been 1 big thing that I really dislike in each edition.
For 5th, the wound shenanigans: it isn't fair or in the spirit of the game taking a 10 nob squad and spreading out all the wounds so it takes 11 wounds before 1 of them dies.
For 6th, I think HP are a little too much. I'm glad the parking lot/ vehicle spam has finally been controlled. However, glancing a Hammerhead 3 times to kill it is a little underpowered. Maybe if they had made it so HP is only removed from penetrating hits it'd be more even?
That being said, I'm really glad that they added overwatch. It makes the game slightly more realistic, and I can't tell you how many times I wished out loud that my tau could shoot before they get charged/wiped.

I like the current edition. The editions of yesteryear were all neat, but the new changes are fun. The only thing I miss from previous editions were the meta; back when marines were marines and ork fighter-bombers only existed in the rare wisps of rumors and forgeworld.

6th edition is by far the best edition yet. I love it. The only thing I dislike is the random psychic powers.

 DeffDred wrote:


No Tau!!!! Sisters had rules in the main book! Tyranids got sexy! DIAZ DAEMONETTES!

I'm sure that 3rd introduced Tau?

I started in second edition and it is still playable. The characters are very powerful and (almost) infinitely customisable.. The vehicle damage tables have some hilarious in-game results. The psychic phase is a brutal metagame. Close combat is epic and drawn out, especially when you have the likes of Dante vs Kharne. You get some very cool random objectives and strategy cards (like planet strike strategems). Grenades are great fun. Orks blow themselves up. Grey Knights are OP Tau don't exist

AND

You get to use a D20

Half my brain still plays 40K 2nd Ed. style. It is the only edition I would (and do...) go back to. 3rd Ed. killed it, but was saved by the Armageddon world wide campaign. Now if GW brought back something like that, I'd be happy. It extended the narrative, added new armies and miniatures, got people playing games and talking about them. You really felt like the whole universe was grinding forward. 4th Ed. brought back some of the cool that it's predecessor destroyed, but it was like the first pancake (the first pancake is never quite right, but you have to make it). Just too many exploits in the rules. 5th seemed to clean most of this up and was a very tight set of rules. You could play a very tactical game, knowing quite well what your opponent was capable of. I feel that 6th has blown the whole game right open. Options for movement are excellent, i.e. snap shotting heavy weapons on the move, but I hate flyers.

We have seen a lot of changes since RT, but the game has always been fun to play for me. Except maybe that first 3rd Ed. game....

Truth be told I loved 5th edition. It had a couple of glaring flaws that hull points (or even just the inclusion of Necrons - which completely disrupted the meta when they arrived), the new psychic powers, and new wound allocation would have fixed.

Wound allocation to stop things like Paladin-spam, psychic powers for buffing tyranids mainly, and hull-points/crons for fixing the cheap as chips parking lot problem. Games-Workshop could have even given close combat weapons AP values and added overwatch and that would have been fine too. A slight buff to shooting and a slight nerf to Close-Combat could have rounded out nicely.

Tbh I found 2nd too slow, and too complex. It worked superbly for Necromunda, though, which remains my favourite GW game of all time.

3rd was a massive change. I loved the change, the first time I played was a game with my brother, and we were both floored with how fast the game played and how much more it felt like you could achieve.

I skipped 4th. Years later when I came back to playing in 5th, it felt familiar to the 3rd ed changes. I still enjoyed the game but I dunno, it just didn't really capture my attention for some reason.

I definitely find 6th edition to be the most enjoyable for me. It feels to me like 5th ed ++ in some ways. The only thing I don't really like about 6th is it feels a bit TOO deadly, in the sense that it seems to me that too many games are decided by either tabling or so close to tabling it's basically the same thing. In those games, it kind of feels like the mission objectives are almost a waste of time, which is a bit disappointing. I'd personally prefer tabling/near tabling to be a pretty rare occurrance. We do use a lot of terrain in my group, so I'm not sure why our games turn out that way.

The only problem i have with 6th is the random charge distances and the fact that having assault grenades doesnt give your opponent "Ld test to overwatch" which would have made things a little better for my poor little wyches, though generally it is great fun and the randomness is funny.

I started the first week or so of 5th edition. Played many many games, but never really go into the tournament scene much. In an overwhelming majority, I find 6th to be a HUGE improvement over 5th. Unfortunately, the few hiccups aren't so much hiccups, more like awkward mid-sentence vomiting.

1: The challenge rules to me just seem to ruin some armies, while giving others an extra turn of "ha ha you can't paste me yet!!"

2: Random charge ranges are fine, but there needs to be a way to get a more reliable distance. Perhaps if one didn't shoot in the shooting phase, allow them to charge 6+d6, or add x distance to their 2d6 charge

3: Fliers. ... I understand that GW wanted/needed to sell more ginormous kits, but seriously, your strategy is to make them ridiculously difficult to drop for most armies that were before. Also failing to address the cost disparity between the old "I'm a weird skimmer" fliers and the new 'actual' fliers. 130 pts for a 12/12/10 triple-lascannon murdermachine of doom that can be taken in squadrons of 3 -vs- 180 pts for 11/11/10 single lascannon/HB/6 mediocre missiles?? I understand that going back and changing point costs in old codicies is something GW is against, but seriously, the fact that I wish tyranids could take guard even as desperate allies so I can field a trio of vendettas is telling.

4: ALL OF THE RANDOM TABLES. Before there were 2 required to play. Game type/table type. Now there is Warlord table>Table type> Game type> Random objectives > Random Terrain> Random weather> Random Tree> Random Psychic powers> Random Random table ad nausium.
The whole purpose (imo) of a random table should be to give the player the change at a big reward, but there is the decided chance of garbage or nothing. Ever notice that every codex that has a built-in warlord table NEVER uses the BRB tables?
Final point -> A couple random tables is fine, especially if they are avoidable. Forcing both players to randomly roll how many random tables they need to randomly roll on is tedious.


Those are literally the 4 things I don't like about 6th edition. Everything else is sensibly done as long as there isn't an individual in your area who tries to exploit the different definitions of the word "the."

I've only played 2'nd, 3rd(for 3 months), 5th(for 6 months), and 6th now for a year. And I have to say I like 6th way better than 3rd/5th and maybe a little better than 2nd. 2nd edition holds a lot of nostalgia as that's how I got into the game playing CSM vs space marines. I'm a big fan of hero hammer so I like seeing come back more in 6th.

I started at the end of 2nd and didn’t care for it. 3rd got me hooked. I think 4th was the best because it fine toned 3rd though in both vehicles were too easy to kill. There were no rediculouse arguments about modeling for advantage. The 4th ed rule book actually said to use any size base you want, just don’t go smaller than it came with. I think 5th did vehicles the best but they started tinkering with things that should have been left alone like wound allocation and blast weapons scattering.

6th is just over complicated. Too many tables, and unless you have a flyer vehicles are tissue paper. Challenges are just silly and unrealistic. True line of site is a terrible idea for an abstract game. It’s like we are back to 2nd and playing an RPG, which is not my cup of tea. I prefer strategy to role playing, but to each his own. However I think the chart for allies was long over due.

I was looking at my old BRB the other night and counted the pages of actual rules. 4th & 5th had around 90 were as 6th has about 135, a staggering difference. In 3rd & 4th, at least in my area, it was much easier to pick up a game at the local store. Everyone knew what they were doing, you made a list and played. Now you make a list, role for this, role for that, 15-20 mins later start. Then role for more random crap and have about 3-5 debates about line of site issues. 6th is just too different of a game.

Technically started 3-4th but don't really remember anything as i was a child

Voted 5th and god i hated it. Also played tau against necrons mostly

At a casual level I have had more fun playing 6th edition than I ever have playing 5th. Win or Lose, heavy casualties all around, and pretty exciting games.

My big problem with 6th is that when you start taking it competitive it just SUCKS. Dealing with 3 heldrakes is a pain in the ass as by the time you kill them all all your troops are dead. Vendettas are horrendously undercosted, and Scythe Spam just breaks the game straight up. The game has really turned into flier spam, which gets shot down by Tau. Certain lists and builds are painfully unfun to play against, and really the competitive scene for 40K in my area has lost a lot of players because of it.

Casually however in games with friends with few-no fliers, everything has been a lot of fun.

I find 6th edition codexes to be much more balanced, although a couple things really tick me off (say, flyers and/or hull points)

 DeffDred wrote:
I was a fan of 3rd.

...

No Tau!!!! Sisters had rules in the main book! Tyranids got sexy! DIAZ DAEMONETTES!

3rd edition Tyranids were fething hideous with a few exceptions - notably the plastics, and Tau were introduced in 3rd edition.

Lol. I like how the most common praise of 3rd edition is that it was a version of 40k that didn't include Tau. Sadly, I can actually see the appeal of this position.

Also I think it's interesting that people like the edition they started with the most. I guess it shouldn't be that surprising, but still. While I technically started 40k in 3rd edition, I really cut my teeth in 4th edition, which, as best as I can tell, was the overall worst edition so far.

 -Loki- wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:
I was a fan of 3rd.

...

No Tau!!!! Sisters had rules in the main book! Tyranids got sexy! DIAZ DAEMONETTES!

3rd edition Tyranids were fething hideous with a few exceptions - notably the plastics, and Tau were introduced in 3rd edition.

Tau were introduced at the tail end of 3rd. So for years I didn't have to deal with them.

I love the metal Tyranids of that age. Old One Eyes is still one of my favorite models. I also liked the Xenomorph Queen Hive Tyrant. Aren't Lictors and Zoanthropes basically the exact same models?

The Tyrant Guard however... ugh. The new ones almost made me pick the army up again.

 Cryogen wrote:
Tbh I found 2nd too slow, and too complex. It worked superbly for Necromunda, though, which remains my favourite GW game of all time...

...3rd was a massive change. I loved the change, the first time I played was a game with my brother, and we were both floored with how fast the game played and how much more it felt like you could achieve.

Just goes to show the massive challenge GW developers have in keeping us all interested

2nd Ed. is slow and complex, but I like it that way (sometimes). When I first played 3rd Ed. it streamlined my experience so arbitrarily that I hated it, i.e. lightning claws and thunder hammers are now actually powerfists . When the Codex entries began fixing these issues the Ed. picked up and, as, I mentioned, Armageddon was a hoot.

I only started in 5th, but I feel like that one was a lot more of an all-arounder game. You could do well with a gunline, you could succeed with assault very well. Tanks could be taken out quickly but they couldn't be whittled down.

To quote a Black Templar player in my group, 6th is very much a shooting man's game. No matter how much you enjoy assault, many rules give shooting that little extra edge, and it shows. All in all, I really have been enjoying 6th, but I'd like a shift back to a balance of shooting and assault.

Each edition has had its own issues. RT gets *real* complicated and awkward *real* fast and technically is supposed to have a 3rd player, a GM, and isn't suited to anything but small games, though it did have better rules for flyers and air to air combat than we do now . 2nd Edition was the first edition that could be played as a "pick up" game, but was nothing even resembling balanced. 3rd ed cut all the fun stuff and much of the variation out of the game and became dominated by assault lists and plasma spam. 4E kinda reinforced that except that Skimmers became even far too capable and tracked tanks, especially tracked transports, were largely useless. 5E fixed a lot of those issues and was the first edition where vehicles were pretty universally useful, but then had really bad issues with things like wound allocation and Kill Points and the like. 6E has added a ton of random stuff for its own sake just to be random, and while fixing many of the issues of 5E went off and largely broke what 5E fixed with regards to vehicles.

2nd was a bit of a mess, but it was such an awesome, characterful, fun mess.

I'd say RT, but I think 2nd polished up a lot of RT's flaws but kept most of its good parts.

Modern 40K has an entirely different feel and style from the classic games. Sometimes in a good way, usually in a bad way.


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 Cryogen wrote:
Tbh I found 2nd too slow, and too complex. It worked superbly for Necromunda, though, which remains my favourite GW game of all time.

3rd was a massive change. I loved the change, the first time I played was a game with my brother, and we were both floored with how fast the game played and how much more it felt like you could achieve.

3rd was faster because you could do so much less in the game, lol. Part of what made 2nd Edition "slow" was that it was a skirmish game, and the individual models were more important.

In 3rd, it was a dice rolling exercise. Set up models, roll dice, remove models, finish.

I have and have played all editions

At present am enjoying 6th Ed - although not the prices :(

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
2nd was a bit of a mess, but it was such an awesome, characterful, fun mess.

I'd say RT, but I think 2nd polished up a lot of RT's flaws but kept most of its good parts.

Modern 40K has an entirely different feel and style from the classic games. Sometimes in a good way, usually in a bad way.


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 Cryogen wrote:
Tbh I found 2nd too slow, and too complex. It worked superbly for Necromunda, though, which remains my favourite GW game of all time.

3rd was a massive change. I loved the change, the first time I played was a game with my brother, and we were both floored with how fast the game played and how much more it felt like you could achieve.

3rd was faster because you could do so much less in the game, lol. Part of what made 2nd Edition "slow" was that it was a skirmish game, and the individual models were more important.

In 3rd, it was a dice rolling exercise. Set up models, roll dice, remove models, finish.

RT was a RPG
2nd was a skirmish game.
3rd was the first time I felt that the game was about two armies fighting it out. Not just herohammer where troops were just mooks to be cashed in rolls by the uber-heros that was 2nd.
4-6th are just refinements of 3rd. Some things get fixed, others broken in each revision. I do think that 6th is the best overall, but it is not a perfect system by any means.

Would you combine any of the editions to have the best of both, or more, editions?

 gnoise wrote:
Would you combine any of the editions to have the best of both, or more, editions?

Balance is a ghost. 40k has many different parts, not just in the core rulebook, but how each army interacts. When something gets tweaked to fix one problem, it is going to cause problems elsewhere. And there is not perfect solution. Look at wound allocation. Do you want to go with the missile launcher is always the last man to die? Multiple wound model allocation shenanigans? Or Look out Sir! tricks? All have issues, it's a matter of personal preference what to go with. Same thing with transports. Rhino rush? Death traps?

At the end of the day it's a fun enough game to play. I just read the current edition, figure out what aspects of the game are in ascendence, and tweak my army for that. If you want perfect balance, play chess. 40k might be broken in spots, but still makes for a fun afternoon.

The way the meta shifts does keep the game quite fresh and enjoyable. I find it most enjoyable personally when people play for flavor and aren't super competitive, although those games are fun too. Like, make a balanced list that isn't min/maxing, you know?

 gnoise wrote:
Would you combine any of the editions to have the best of both, or more, editions?

You bet! That's what we've already done. Our version is a blend of mostly 4th and 5th with a couple things from 6th mixed in, with our own rules to smooth over things we didn't believe GW ever got right. Over time with each passing edition our rules will grow further from the mainstream WH40K mechanics, I'm sure. No regrets there! If something good pops up we'll find a way to incorporate it.

I prefered 2nd ed as the last 'skirmish game' of 40k.
For large battle games the Epic rule sets are far better than mutated WHFB rules,( 40k STILL uses), can ever be.

EA. covers ALL the game play found in 40k, Apoc, PS,COD, etc, AND ALL the army lists in just 138 pages.

5th edition remains my favorite. A nice Edition 5.5, with wound allocation and armored vehicle fixes, but without the idiotic random tables, would be perfect.

The randomness makes zero sense.

1) The warlord, the guy behind the entire army...he doesn't know what he's good at until he gets to the battlefield. WTF?

2) The psyker, the guy who spends his entire life studying psychic disciplines, doesn't know what he has learned until he gets to the battlefield. WTF?

3) Night fight. Should always have been mission dependent. Pretty much all missions should have an Attacker and a Defender. Defender gets to go first, Attacker gets to decide night fighting and gets some bonus to reserve rolls or something like that. Never should have been left up to a random die roll except in very specific missions (2 patrols running into one another accidentally). Currently makes zero sense.

4) Random charge distances. I've heard people say, "It's supposed to represent the unit getting beaten back by fire!". OK...then explain to me why a Bloodthirster, the nastiest melon-fether in the galaxy, can end up with a charge distance of 2 trying to reach a vehicle that can't even fire overwatch. Derp. Mechanic makes absolutely zero sense. Overwatch alone makes this random enough (i.e., killing off the front-most model).


Random for the sake of random is NOT a fun game mechanic. Most metas I've seen choose to house rule this stuff.

I started in 5th and I miss it, mech spam dominated it, yes but at least we didn't have auto-take flyers (vendetta) and ADLs everywhere. I also dislike all the random tables in 6th and I despise challenges because it made power fists on characters pointless, and as a result I had to rip off a lot of arms.

When I think back to 5th, I think of wound allocation bs and constant 4+ cover for everyone, all the time. So I don't miss it too much.

Yes 6th edition has its flaws, but when combined with the new balanced codexes, I think it's head and shoulders above 5th.


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 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

4) Random charge distances. I've heard people say, "It's supposed to represent the unit getting beaten back by fire!". OK...then explain to me why a Bloodthirster, the nastiest melon-fether in the galaxy, can end up with a charge distance of 2 trying to reach a vehicle that can't even fire overwatch. Derp. Mechanic makes absolutely zero sense. Overwatch alone makes this random enough (i.e., killing off the front-most model).

Explain to me how 3 space marines can miss the side of a Land Raider from 2 inches away. Derp. Mechanic makes absolutely zero sense.

Except it does. Guarenteeing the charge usually guarentees a win for the charger, since assault units are specialised and far more effective in a single round than shooting units.

 BryllCream wrote:
When I think back to 5th, I think of wound allocation bs and constant 4+ cover for everyone, all the time. So I don't miss it too much.

Yes 6th edition has its flaws, but when combined with the new balanced codexes, I think it's head and shoulders above 5th.


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 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

4) Random charge distances. I've heard people say, "It's supposed to represent the unit getting beaten back by fire!". OK...then explain to me why a Bloodthirster, the nastiest melon-fether in the galaxy, can end up with a charge distance of 2 trying to reach a vehicle that can't even fire overwatch. Derp. Mechanic makes absolutely zero sense. Overwatch alone makes this random enough (i.e., killing off the front-most model).

Explain to me how 3 space marines can miss the side of a Land Raider from 2 inches away. Derp. Mechanic makes absolutely zero sense.

Except it does. Guarenteeing the charge usually guarentees a win for the charger, since assault units are specialised and far more effective in a single round than shooting units.

First, I direct you to this study...http://www.theppsc.org/Staff_Views/Aveni/OIS.pdf

People notorious suck at shooting, even at close range targets. The probability of your 3 "Space Marines" missing that Land Raider, if you take a human example, is not really out of question. Those same 3 Space Marines somehow running 2 inches, when the game physics afford sufficient time that they *could* run 12 inches, is lunacy.

One skill (marksmanship) relies upon many factors - target position, target speed, shooter position, stress of the shooter as measured on the Yerkes-Dodson stress-performance curve, condition of the weapon, distractions, etc.

Another skill (moving) is based upon your ability to cover X given T time. You will see a very large standard deviation in measurements of the first skill, and very small standard deviation within subjects in measurement of the second.

Long story short, the random charge distance mechanic is a moronic brainchild that should have been aborted with a coat hanger. Instead, Fantasy's droppings somehow ended up on 40k's plate and now every competitive build that relied upon assault has to wait another X amount of years until GW produces 7th edition or goes out of business. The mechanic (combined with other 6th ed changes) made assault-based armies essentially worthless in competitive environments, and makes no sense from the perspective of real-world logic. Let's bear in mind that "science fiction" means that aspects of reality are fictitious...concepts like "time", "velocity", and "distance" are assumed to be taken at face value here. That said, I don't really care about the "real world logic" of a little toy soldier game beyond the fact that "real world logic" actually suggests that P(miss) is actually > 0 in ALL shooting situations, especially in close range shooting encounters.

For what it's worth, my main 40k army (IG) doesn't rely at all upon the assault mechanic to function, so that's not the source of my issues with the mechanic. It's just a shame to see the game become entirely unidimensional (i.e., based in shooting).

5th Edition was leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessors, for me. I played 3-6. 3rd was where mlee armies just ate you. 4th was where melee armies could stall you but shooters finally could at least HOPE to fight another round. 5th Edition made the game feel like I kind of envisioned it from the get go. Models bacame supremely awesome near the end of 5th. I felt they got it right. the wound allocation never ceased to bother me but you got used to it and just moved on to other things tocomplain about.

In 6E they have obviously made a conscious attempt to make it more of a simulation than it was. they also brought the game close to Fantasy terms in some ways without allowing itself to lose that distinction.

I am torn on whether 5 or 6 is better but I leaned towards 6 just because wounding makes way more sense now and the game now includes more stuff.

Actually, it's the disparity that bothers me with 6th.

You have random charge range, but you don't have random shooting range. You have an entire class of targets that can't be targeted with close combat (fliers), but you don't have an entire class of targets that can't be targeted with shooting. You get a free shooting attack against someone charging you, but you don't get a free close combat attack against people shooting you.

40k was already imbalanced against assault, and the things they did to it in 6th ed seem to go beyond balancing, beyond punitive, all the way past just idiotic (especially with fliers- who can't be targetted by close combat - getting to use close combat attacks on stuff... without even getting into close combat), to rules made by throwing darts at a dartboard.

Perhaps that's why there's so much randomness in the game... perhaps the rules themselves were determined randomly...

 Ailaros wrote:
but you don't get a free close combat attack against people shooting you.

...I have no idea how this should work.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
When I think back to 5th, I think of wound allocation bs and constant 4+ cover for everyone, all the time. So I don't miss it too much.

Yes 6th edition has its flaws, but when combined with the new balanced codexes, I think it's head and shoulders above 5th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

4) Random charge distances. I've heard people say, "It's supposed to represent the unit getting beaten back by fire!". OK...then explain to me why a Bloodthirster, the nastiest melon-fether in the galaxy, can end up with a charge distance of 2 trying to reach a vehicle that can't even fire overwatch. Derp. Mechanic makes absolutely zero sense. Overwatch alone makes this random enough (i.e., killing off the front-most model).

Explain to me how 3 space marines can miss the side of a Land Raider from 2 inches away. Derp. Mechanic makes absolutely zero sense.

Except it does. Guarenteeing the charge usually guarentees a win for the charger, since assault units are specialised and far more effective in a single round than shooting units.

First, I direct you to this study...http://www.theppsc.org/Staff_Views/Aveni/OIS.pdf

People notorious suck at shooting, even at close range targets. The probability of your 3 "Space Marines" missing that Land Raider, if you take a human example, is not really out of question. Those same 3 Space Marines somehow running 2 inches, when the game physics afford sufficient time that they *could* run 12 inches, is lunacy.

One skill (marksmanship) relies upon many factors - target position, target speed, shooter position, stress of the shooter as measured on the Yerkes-Dodson stress-performance curve, condition of the weapon, distractions, etc.

Another skill (moving) is based upon your ability to cover X given T time. You will see a very large standard deviation in measurements of the first skill, and very small standard deviation within subjects in measurement of the second.

Long story short, the random charge distance mechanic is a moronic brainchild that should have been aborted with a coat hanger. Instead, Fantasy's droppings somehow ended up on 40k's plate and now every competitive build that relied upon assault has to wait another X amount of years until GW produces 7th edition or goes out of business. The mechanic (combined with other 6th ed changes) made assault-based armies essentially worthless in competitive environments, and makes no sense from the perspective of real-world logic. Let's bear in mind that "science fiction" means that aspects of reality are fictitious...concepts like "time", "velocity", and "distance" are assumed to be taken at face value here. That said, I don't really care about the "real world logic" of a little toy soldier game beyond the fact that "real world logic" actually suggests that P(miss) is actually > 0 in ALL shooting situations, especially in close range shooting encounters.

For what it's worth, my main 40k army (IG) doesn't rely at all upon the assault mechanic to function, so that's not the source of my issues with the mechanic. It's just a shame to see the game become entirely unidimensional (i.e., based in shooting).

How is it fair that a unit relying on shooting, still has to hit and miss, whereas an assault force is guarenteed the kill if it can close the difference? Random charge range rectifies that disparity, and the increased pile-in move and +1 attack for the entire squad, compensate for this.

If I could have the models we have now in 4th I'd be a happy camper. I mean aside from the PDF codex I had to suffer through for the later half I loved 4th.

 BryllCream wrote:


How is it fair that a unit relying on shooting, still has to hit and miss, whereas an assault force is guarenteed the kill if it can close the difference? Random charge range rectifies that disparity, and the increased pile-in move and +1 attack for the entire squad, compensate for this.

Wut? Since when does an assault GUARANTEE a kill? Still have to hit and miss I'm pretty sure. Unlike shooting, assault always puts the attacker into harm's way. Even lopsided victories tend to whittle down assaulting forces even if a slight amount. Random charges ARE stupid. If you don't think attackers should get a bonus attack then fix that, not create a system where the charging unit has a variable range of SIX TIMES from low to high.

Assault moves 3D3+ initiative

 BryllCream wrote:

How is it fair that a unit relying on shooting, still has to hit and miss, whereas an assault force is guarenteed the kill if it can close the difference? Random charge range rectifies that disparity, and the increased pile-in move and +1 attack for the entire squad, compensate for this.

We may be playing different games, because in 40k you roll to hit and wound in close combat as well...

Assaulting within your move distance should be an ld test, outside should be an ld test then a d6 on top of move distance

Ailaros wrote: but you don't get a free close combat attack against people shooting you.

How, um, exactly, would that work?

I mean, I'd love to hear the explanation for this one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nevelon wrote:
RT was a RPG
2nd was a skirmish game.
3rd was the first time I felt that the game was about two armies fighting it out. Not just herohammer where troops were just mooks to be cashed in rolls by the uber-heros that was 2nd.
4-6th are just refinements of 3rd. Some things get fixed, others broken in each revision. I do think that 6th is the best overall, but it is not a perfect system by any means.

I think the best part about 2nd was that the Special Characters were "opponent's permission" only. I mean, sure, some codex books had the ability to make ridiculous stock characters (looking at you Codex: Chaos, lol), but it was hardly herohammer, or perhaps you just weren't very good at it. I distinctly remember the Incredible Vanishing Eldar Avatar who managed to stray into the line of fire of an assault cannon. Shooting and overwatch were so burly in 2nd, that characters were quite crunchable if you weren't smart with them. Plus, hey, if that special character got into close combat with your troops, screw it, just open fire on the melee.

Besides, 40K was always meant to be a skirmish game. There was a game for large battles between armies, and it was called Epic. 3rd+ doesn't even do that good of a job of replicating large battles. It just puts maybe 40% more models on the table and lets you roll more dice. Really, the difference in scale between 2nd and 3rd was chopping the points values in half. It wasn't like someone would come and physically restrain you from playing 3500 points of 2nd Edition and fielding about the same amount of models as a 2000 point 3rd Edition game.

And heck, since 2nd had so much more detailed of a ruleset, you might actually end up with something resembling a battle, instead of a jumble of models moving towards eachother (lol 12 inch shooting ranges) and getting pulled off the table.

Wolfnid420 wrote:
Assault moves 3D3+ initiative

I love that idea, so so much, but it won't happen because they want to go away from "move speed"

Edition wise, 6th has absolutely the best framework of rules.

I'd want to run my 2nd edition army, somehow updated to 6th though, since it no longer exists.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Ailaros wrote: but you don't get a free close combat attack against people shooting you.

How, um, exactly, would that work?

I mean, I'd love to hear the explanation for this one.

Well it doesn't have to be a close combat attack, does it? May be something like what the BT got, you get shot at, you roll your Ld test, then you get to move some inches closer.

On topic: I started in 5th, preferred 5th over 6th for pretty much the same reason as most people here: the lack of randomness was so much better. I'm glad that DE is considered one of the last few codex for them to renew, I'd hate to have to roll on a table to see what weapon my grotesques are packing, whether it's a liquifier gauntlet that can destroy universe several times over or a trucking spoon. DE is fickle(too!).

Though from the sound of it, I also really like that older edition where they weren't using TLOS, TLOS never quite made sense to me, and I hate hugging table(they don't hug me back).

Codexes were full of character and there were minidexes!

Codex: Craftworld Eldar, Codex: Armeggedon, Codex: Chaos 3.5!!!!!!(greatest codex ever written).

Terminators got their first invul save! Vehicle Design rules! Scarabs weren't swarms and could explode!

No Tau!!!! Sisters had rules in the main book! Tyranids got sexy! DIAZ DAEMONETTES!

Gamesday had events and stuff worth traveling to see! FW had like 4 items for sale!

Plastic Dreadnoughts?!!! NO FETHING WAY!!!!

As mentioned already, Tau were introduced about mid third. Also, Scarabs were swarms and did NOT explode (you're thinking of the original 2nd ed. rules) and the Tyranids, well, they just kind of got more silly in some ways and less silly in others. As for the 3rd ed codexes - Even people on the studio team like Gav Thorpe have said that they felt they went too far in cutting the fun/fluff from the dexes and 3rd is almost universally considered the most bland edition when it comes to that. Plus, the "golden era" for Games Day events was also during 2nd ed. I'm actually wondering if you were playing a mash-up of third and second ed.

For me, 2nd ed all the way unless we're playing 5th. lol RT was pretty difficult to play but the second ed rule set smoothed out a lot of that while keeping an insane amount of character and flavor to the game. Yes, it took longer in some cases and the games were way smaller, but oh the detail! Imagine being able to do things like use your sword to parry a blow in cc. I also miss the secret missions. You and your opponent each picked mission cards and did not reveal what your mission was until the end of the game. The other nice thing about 2nd ed was that you didn't need the huge table spaces we often need now.

All that being said, I also really liked 5th. It had it's flaws certainly, but I felt like it was a very fun and fast playing rule set that was fairly straight forward and somewhat well suited to competitions. 6th isn't bad - I feel like it's a bit of a throw back to 2nd, but there's just so much that doesn't seem thought out. It's fun, but kind of awkward for my tastes. I feel like it almost forces you to make house rules to fix a lot of things which then means that if I play at club "A" today, and club "B" tomorrow, I could be playing with two almost completely different systems.

 Ailaros wrote:
Actually, it's the disparity that bothers me with 6th.
...40k was already imbalanced against assault...

Umm...yeah. No. Just no. You cannot POSSIBLY pass the straight face test and tell ME that assaults were on the short end of the stick... EVER before. I will cite the rules STRAIGHT from the books if you need me to. There is no WAY that's a correct statement. Codex's? Two words: Blood Angels. Two more? Grey Knights... Two More? Chaos Daemons. Just Blood Crushers, throw in some flamers. Two more?... No I think the point is made. Nuff said.

Now if you want to claim that the pindulum has swung slightly too far, i would engage you on THAT point. But there is ZERO to engage on as far as some sense that assault was "not fair" to assaulters before this point. 'Cause thats bull. No offense but...come on man.

Here's just my take: the pendulum HAS swung. No one should be disingenuous and say otherwise. It has swung. But all that means...actually... Is that you NEED to take Baal Predators and the like and INCLUDE some shooting instead of just taking it for two round and then wrecking everything that stands against you as was the previous truth.

In other words, like with every edition, new units are necessary. Shooting units just ARE necessary and YES you will not be able to take an ENTIRELY assault army of SIXTY Blood Angels and Terminators and their priests with no guns really, and ram them down enemy throats while opponents helplessly watch it happen and choke on their own blood, having no fun in the process. Assault was so powerful against almost EVERY xeno that some units were utterly abandoned STRICTLY on the basis of this dynamic. Many Imperial Guardsman took it in the face from Space Wolves in a BIG way from outflanking crazy units that could end them in a turn. Hell I DID thi kind of thing to people!

So what REALLY happened here is, you have to have a balanced force even moe than in 5th Edition. You can STILL take 60 Marines and ram them down my throat and it will still work...you just have to give up some points or upgrades or termies and such to make room for the whittlers who can soften the targets first. And I think thats okay. relying on nothing but hammers is...pretty unrealistic in a 41st Millennium.

 amanita wrote:

Wut? Since when does an assault GUARANTEE a kill? Still have to hit and miss I'm pretty sure. Unlike shooting, assault always puts the attacker into harm's way. Even lopsided victories tend to whittle down assaulting forces even if a slight amount. Random charges ARE stupid. If you don't think attackers should get a bonus attack then fix that, not create a system where the charging unit has a variable range of SIX TIMES from low to high.

Well any space marine squad bar scouts can wreck any of my vehicles in a single turn, and any dedicated assault unit will destroy anything that's not a blob in a single turn.

Whereas a specialised shooting unit would struggle to be this effective. Sternguard won't kill as many guardsmen as khorne beserkers, my Russes certainly can't obliterate enemy units with the same certainty that a squad of terminators with lightening claws could.

You also keep ignoring the extra attack that is now given without the precondition of being in assault range to begin with. This can make a *huge* difference, even more so with the new random charge range.

The biggest offender for the problems with balance was 3rd Edition, which was the first edition that tried to streamline Assault and make the game end in massive, decisive melees. In fact, the designers admitted that was part of their goal at the time. They cut shooting ranges down drastically (none worse than the poor shuriken catapult which became 12" max).

The problem is that what 3rd did, was introduce an era of armies that were themed around close combat, in a back storied environment that has effective rapid fire guns, lol.

In 2nd Edition, even Tyranids could shoot effectively. The melee troops like Hormogaunts and Genestealers weren't even that prolific (possibly because hormogaunts were ridiculously expensive to buy at the time, lol). Assault-focused troops were specialists. They weren't supposed to be the core of your army, and an army with no shooting was probably going to be in a bad way.

All 6th did was put the game's emphasis back on shooting where it should be. Some armies suffer from this because they've spent the last ten years being focused entirely on assault. Hopefully what this means is that upcoming codex army lists for those armies shift back to giving them the ability to combat effectively in a game where shooting has a legitimate level of power for normal armies, not just gunline armies.

I can empathize with the players whose model collections have been made partially obsolete by this change. But ultimately it's good for the game. They've been talking about getting away from "Fantasy Innnnn Spaaaaaaaaaace" for years. It's good to see a ruleset that's actually at least trying to do that.

If GW are really trying to get away from 'Fantasy in Space!'
Perhaps they should stop using WHFB game mechanics , and resolution methods!

3rd edition but only because of the csm codex, otherwise 6th is one of the best editions. Much better than say warhammer fantasy 8th edition.

I have been playing since 4th edition, but I have an understanding of how 3rd edition worked and it seems to me every edition since then has only made the game better. Perhaps with a few exceptions in the rules or codexes here and there I suppose. So, I picked 6th edition.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The biggest offender for the problems with balance was 3rd Edition, which was the first edition that tried to streamline Assault and make the game end in massive, decisive melees. In fact, the designers admitted that was part of their goal at the time. They cut shooting ranges down drastically (none worse than the poor shuriken catapult which became 12" max).

The problem is that what 3rd did, was introduce an era of armies that were themed around close combat, in a back storied environment that has effective rapid fire guns, lol.

In 2nd Edition, even Tyranids could shoot effectively. The melee troops like Hormogaunts and Genestealers weren't even that prolific (possibly because hormogaunts were ridiculously expensive to buy at the time, lol). Assault-focused troops were specialists. They weren't supposed to be the core of your army, and an army with no shooting was probably going to be in a bad way.

All 6th did was put the game's emphasis back on shooting where it should be. Some armies suffer from this because they've spent the last ten years being focused entirely on assault. Hopefully what this means is that upcoming codex army lists for those armies shift back to giving them the ability to combat effectively in a game where shooting has a legitimate level of power for normal armies, not just gunline armies.

I can empathize with the players whose model collections have been made partially obsolete by this change. But ultimately it's good for the game. They've been talking about getting away from "Fantasy Innnnn Spaaaaaaaaaace" for years. It's good to see a ruleset that's actually at least trying to do that.

Shurikens were probably nerfed because of just how stupidly powerful they were in 2nd. There's also the fact that 2nd edition had plenty of horrible OP shooting, not to mention the power of Eldar in both Assault and Shooting was pretty damn powerful.

Shooting should be PART, not EVERYTHING. Chaos has such nerfed assault that it's rather pointless in the long run due to how they screwed up the transport rules.

4th Edition Gunlines are not good for the game, it's bland, boring, and makes for games where the only objective is how well you shoot (See 5th edition IG, 5th edition GK, 4th edition Tau/eldar Skimmerspam). If assault has no purpose, what's the point of having it in then.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
They've been talking about getting away from "Fantasy Innnnn Spaaaaaaaaaace" for years. It's good to see a ruleset that's actually at least trying to do that.

Did someone forget to tell GW about that?

Mr. Merrett's testimony was hours in length, initially focused on explaining Games Workshop's business to the jury. Some highlights from his testimony:
Warhammer 40,000 was described to the jury as "Warhammer Fantasy in space"

I couldn't resist.

What I don't understand when people say "WH40k is all about shooting" "assault has no place in WH40k" or "WH40k's emphasis should be shooting" is that... Are they mixing up what they want with what GW actually want? Because from what I can see, from the fact that most HQs having only CC upgrades, to CSM having an entire rule that only matters in CC, to various amazing CC units, USRs or special rules that are CC only, I think GW does want assault and shooting to play an equal part in their game, but they're just doing an absolutely horrible job at bringing that balance!

 Jancoran wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
Actually, it's the disparity that bothers me with 6th.
...40k was already imbalanced against assault...

Umm...yeah. No. Just no. You cannot POSSIBLY pass the straight face test and tell ME that assaults were on the short end of the stick... EVER before. I will cite the rules STRAIGHT from the books if you need me to. There is no WAY that's a correct statement. Codex's? Two words: Blood Angels. Two more? Grey Knights... Two More? Chaos Daemons. Just Blood Crushers, throw in some flamers. Two more?... No I think the point is made. Nuff said.

Now if you want to claim that the pindulum has swung slightly too far, i would engage you on THAT point. But there is ZERO to engage on as far as some sense that assault was "not fair" to assaulters before this point. 'Cause thats bull. No offense but...come on man.

Here's just my take: the pendulum HAS swung. No one should be disingenuous and say otherwise. It has swung. But all that means...actually... Is that you NEED to take Baal Predators and the like and INCLUDE some shooting instead of just taking it for two round and then wrecking everything that stands against you as was the previous truth.

In other words, like with every edition, new units are necessary. Shooting units just ARE necessary and YES you will not be able to take an ENTIRELY assault army of SIXTY Blood Angels and Terminators and their priests with no guns really, and ram them down enemy throats while opponents helplessly watch it happen and choke on their own blood, having no fun in the process. Assault was so powerful against almost EVERY xeno that some units were utterly abandoned STRICTLY on the basis of this dynamic. Many Imperial Guardsman took it in the face from Space Wolves in a BIG way from outflanking crazy units that could end them in a turn. Hell I DID thi kind of thing to people!

So what REALLY happened here is, you have to have a balanced force even moe than in 5th Edition. You can STILL take 60 Marines and ram them down my throat and it will still work...you just have to give up some points or upgrades or termies and such to make room for the whittlers who can soften the targets first. And I think thats okay. relying on nothing but hammers is...pretty unrealistic in a 41st Millennium.

So please tell me how my Chaos Daemon army can get guns when our most reliable ranged weaponry is a chariot that doesn't work, psykers, soulgrinder, and a skull cannon (not to mention a random table that might or might not feth either player over)

On GK. I always thought they were more close/mid range shooty actually. Bar the specific draigo list. The most popular lists I've seen have been IG, Space Wolves with range, GK with range, and the sorts. What of orks? Where did greentide go? Well now we have dakka orks. If we are going on the argument list.... you listed 3 armies. One which was largely considered broken and another that had a 30% chance of auto-losing and only became broken when White Dwarf came out (and then promptly got the tzeentch models nerfed dramatically and t4 bloodcrushers)

Now I would like to go on and say, what I assume he meant was that 5th edition favoured shooting. Not drastically. But as more and more tanks came into the battlefield, the less useful cc seemed to become (from my meta at least). Then the new edition came out and the pendulum made CC way too underpowered. Granted, I will concur 3rd or 4th (do not remember which) favoured CC disgustingly

Also if we go the route of curses all those people playing CC only armies! Well what about armies like Tau and IG which are SHOOTING ONLY! Also even when you get into assault, it is likely to lsoe units. Shooting units don't have to worry (or worry from guns usually inferior to theirs)

Eeeeh.... personally I cannot say I like any of the editions that much.... If I must pick one though.... 6th edition. Although some of their rules (allies etc) really don't work properly in my opinion, they were implimented and I cannot wait for them to improve.

It's a hard choice. I grew up on 2nd Edition and still play a game or two of it every year at this point. Rogue Trader is huge fun but a lot more like proto-Necromunda or original D&D (with lazors!) where it was more of a hybrid RPG/wargame than a full-on wargame. But it is huge fun to just get a game going of it (Deadzone actually gives me a crazy Rogue Trader vibe, especially with the feel of the space-fantasy expy races).

3rd was a big disappointment for me. I was hoping for a 2nd Edition with the bad bits excised and fixed, instead I got a totally new game with a completely new scale and focus to it. I played it, but never really enjoyed it. And the balance issues and shaky codex quality really shot down any chance of enjoyment.

From there, 4th and 5th were a haze of flip-flopping design philosophies that resulted in (for me at least) really sub-par game play that was neither fun nor engaging. The narrative elements of 2nd/RT that got me in to the game were gone and there wasn't any in-depth tactical gameplay there to make up for it. It managed to be a simplistic game that was paradoxically too complex to be worth the trouble. And of course, codex quality, while improved from 2nd and 3rd, was still crap which screwed up any chance of a fun meta.

6th is, for me, more of a return to 2nd Edition and RT. It brings back some of the gonzo fun of the 40k-verse that had been missing. Still not really deep, it is at least enjoyable on its own merits again (at least in my mind) and can generate the same raconteur-friendly stories of 2nd and RT which were the main draws for me in earlier editions. The other positive point is it, thus far, has some of the best codices written for it in terms of both background and gameplay. This makes it pretty easy for me to love it.

If you had a gun to my head I'd probably say stick with 6th and clean up the bad bits. 2nd and RT have more warts than 6th, and 3rd-5th are just too bland and unappealing to me. 6th manages a nice balance while still fumbling a bit in areas (internal balance of the psychic powers and flyers may need a second pass though ever since the Helldrake most new ones have been damn reasonable). But army balance within the edition is quite good and the basics of the rules are quite solid. As a framework, it is better than it has been in over a decade. If they continue writing codices as they are, then it may well be one of the best editions to date (so long as it doesn't have a GK/IG/Space Wolf/Necron or WFB Daemon-like fumble in it that borks the meta). If they can fix the current bad codices when the time comes, it should smooth the current wrinkles in the meta and let the system really shine. Right now, their backwards compatibility allowing use of the worst examples of last edition (and the fact that the updates have made old-school skimmer-flyers kind of broken in some lists) is the largest culprit for messing with the games. The more codices designed to work in 6th, the better it gets. Sadly, unless this is the first edition to ever get a codex out for every race/faction, we will end up being disappointed on that end. Though at the current rate, it may actually manage it; I certainly hope it does; having a fully self-contained edition would be nice for once (especially if 7th ends up doing something horrible).

 DeffDred wrote:
Vehicle Design rules!

I remember these. You could totally make a completely free gun turret vehicle with them. I used to imagine spamming my side of the board with them, before I found out about the FoC

The narrative elements of 2nd/RT that got me in to the game were gone and there wasn't any in-depth tactical gameplay there to make up for it

Ok I definitely need to go check 2nd ed out. I'm dead keen on the narrative aspect, but it's hard to build that up when every game is some variation of "helldrake helldrake helldrake manticore manticore manticore..."

 Dakkamite wrote:

 DeffDred wrote:
Vehicle Design rules!

I remember these. You could totally make a completely free gun turret vehicle with them. I used to imagine spamming my side of the board with them, before I found out about the FoC

The narrative elements of 2nd/RT that got me in to the game were gone and there wasn't any in-depth tactical gameplay there to make up for it

Ok I definitely need to go check 2nd ed out. I'm dead keen on the narrative aspect, but it's hard to build that up when every game is some variation of "helldrake helldrake helldrake manticore manticore manticore..."

In 2nd it used to be "Jetpacking eldar, jetpacking eldar, jetpacking eldar, Virus bomb, Virus Bomb, Virus Bomb, Nid fething Cards, Nid Cards, Nid Cards, NID CARDS, 5 assault cannon space wolf terminators."

I like 2nd, honestly, but it's balance was worse then anything within the past fourth editions! (6th, 5th, 4th, and third!). With so much that could cause hell in a bad way, less manticore wounds your army, and more "Oh, your psykers are fighting my nids? Well Psychic scream, every turn they gotta roll 2D6 and if they under their toughness, they are stunned, over it, they die"

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


In 2nd it used to be "Jetpacking eldar, jetpacking eldar, jetpacking eldar, Virus bomb, Virus Bomb, Virus Bomb, Nid fething Cards, Nid Cards, Nid Cards, NID CARDS, 5 assault cannon space wolf terminators."

I like 2nd, honestly, but it's balance was worse then anything within the past fourth editions! (6th, 5th, 4th, and third!). With so much that could cause hell in a bad way, less manticore wounds your army, and more "Oh, your psykers are fighting my nids? Well Psychic scream, every turn they gotta roll 2D6 and if they under their toughness, they are stunned, over it, they die"

This. Nobody even bothered to take an expensive unit or character, because pretty much everyone was running an Assassin using Polymorphine, or a Swooping Hawk Exarch, with a Vortex Grenade.

It was only balanced insomuch as everyone had a unit that could alt-control-delete one opposing player's unit off of the table on T1, nearly guaranteed.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


In 2nd it used to be "Jetpacking eldar, jetpacking eldar, jetpacking eldar, Virus bomb, Virus Bomb, Virus Bomb, Nid fething Cards, Nid Cards, Nid Cards, NID CARDS, 5 assault cannon space wolf terminators."

I like 2nd, honestly, but it's balance was worse then anything within the past fourth editions! (6th, 5th, 4th, and third!). With so much that could cause hell in a bad way, less manticore wounds your army, and more "Oh, your psykers are fighting my nids? Well Psychic scream, every turn they gotta roll 2D6 and if they under their toughness, they are stunned, over it, they die"

This. Nobody even bothered to take an expensive unit or character, because pretty much everyone was running an Assassin using Polymorphine, or a Swooping Hawk Exarch, with a Vortex Grenade.

It was only balanced insomuch as everyone had a unit that could alt-control-delete one opposing player's unit off of the table on T1, nearly guaranteed.

Remember when you could take a Polymorphined Assassin with Terminator armor on a bike and still 'pose' as the enemy?

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
I think the best part about 2nd was that the Special Characters were "opponent's permission" only.

Actually, it was 3rd edition that added in the requirement for permission to use special characters. There was no such requirement in 2nd ed, although a lot of gaming groups and tournaments had their own 'No Special Characters' rules.

...but it was hardly herohammer,

You're one of maybe 3 people on the planet who thinks this. The 'take a bare minimum of troops and pile as much wargear onto your characters as you have points for' approach was the standard for most of 2nd edition. And it wasn't just Chaos that had insane characters. My Marine army included a 4th Level Psyker Inquisitor Lord in Terminatro Armour, and a 4th Level Chief Librarian with a power field (so between the two of them a guarantee of getting the Vortex psychic power, and the other Inquisition psychic powers didn't suck either) and a Terminator Captain with a DIsplacer Field and a Vortex Grenade (at least until GW ruled that Terminators couldn't throw grenades). The rest of the army was generally superfluous.

 insaniak wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
I think the best part about 2nd was that the Special Characters were "opponent's permission" only.

Actually, it was 3rd edition that added in the requirement for permission to use special characters. There was no such requirement in 2nd ed, although a lot of gaming groups and tournaments had their own 'No Special Characters' rules.

2nd edition did, however, have points limitations on characters. For example, Ghazkull could only be used in 2000pt games.

 -Loki- wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
I think the best part about 2nd was that the Special Characters were "opponent's permission" only.

Actually, it was 3rd edition that added in the requirement for permission to use special characters. There was no such requirement in 2nd ed, although a lot of gaming groups and tournaments had their own 'No Special Characters' rules.

2nd edition did, however, have points limitations on characters. For example, Ghazkull could only be used in 2000pt games.

And like in Fantasy, you only used SC's because they have special rules, because you could make bull combo's 20X more effective then they were.

 Ailaros wrote:
Actually, it's the disparity that bothers me with 6th.

You have random charge range, but you don't have random shooting range. You have an entire class of targets that can't be targeted with close combat (fliers), but you don't have an entire class of targets that can't be targeted with shooting. You get a free shooting attack against someone charging you, but you don't get a free close combat attack against people shooting you.

40k was already imbalanced against assault, and the things they did to it in 6th ed seem to go beyond balancing, beyond punitive, all the way past just idiotic (especially with fliers- who can't be targetted by close combat - getting to use close combat attacks on stuff... without even getting into close combat), to rules made by throwing darts at a dartboard.

Perhaps that's why there's so much randomness in the game... perhaps the rules themselves were determined randomly...

Beautiful, this sums 90% of my position nicely. Better believe I exalted that gak.

The other 10% is cutting out outflanking (etc) assaults and sweeping advances of any kind, GtG being ridiculously poor (troops gone to ground should be nigh-on invincible, as any FoW player will tell you), and most of all barrage weapons. I only recently learned they don't need LoS, a spotter, or anything. Not only has GW removed Assault from the game but they are looking to take Movement out as well. Seriously, the barrage weapons rules are the worst rules I've ever seen, I just can't even articulate how broken this gak is.

Wolfnid420 wrote:
Assault moves 3D3+ initiative

Dunno about 3d6 but by god +INT seems like a great idea. Maybe INT affects run distance and/or difficult terrain as well? Certainly a good way to make that stat more useful. Also, perhaps no more random charge against targets that cannot overwatch? The 'hail of fire' thing makes sense to a degree but 'oh damn I slipped on the way to that tank's rear armour' is bogus

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


In 2nd it used to be "Jetpacking eldar, jetpacking eldar, jetpacking eldar, Virus bomb, Virus Bomb, Virus Bomb, Nid fething Cards, Nid Cards, Nid Cards, NID CARDS, 5 assault cannon space wolf terminators."

I like 2nd, honestly, but it's balance was worse then anything within the past fourth editions! (6th, 5th, 4th, and third!). With so much that could cause hell in a bad way, less manticore wounds your army, and more "Oh, your psykers are fighting my nids? Well Psychic scream, every turn they gotta roll 2D6 and if they under their toughness, they are stunned, over it, they die"

This. Nobody even bothered to take an expensive unit or character, because pretty much everyone was running an Assassin using Polymorphine, or a Swooping Hawk Exarch, with a Vortex Grenade.

It was only balanced insomuch as everyone had a unit that could alt-control-delete one opposing player's unit off of the table on T1, nearly guaranteed.

You guys played with awful people, lol.

I literally never played in any games where all the broken stuff like Vortex Grenades, or Virus Grenades, etc, were used. No tournaments or events allowed any of that stuff. Not even the friendly games had them. Why would you want the virus bomb? What fun is it to either do absolutely nothing, or table the whole army with one piece of gear?

It's starting to sound like a failure of individual character and values, not a failure of the rule system of 2nd.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:


In 2nd it used to be "Jetpacking eldar, jetpacking eldar, jetpacking eldar, Virus bomb, Virus Bomb, Virus Bomb, Nid fething Cards, Nid Cards, Nid Cards, NID CARDS, 5 assault cannon space wolf terminators."

I like 2nd, honestly, but it's balance was worse then anything within the past fourth editions! (6th, 5th, 4th, and third!). With so much that could cause hell in a bad way, less manticore wounds your army, and more "Oh, your psykers are fighting my nids? Well Psychic scream, every turn they gotta roll 2D6 and if they under their toughness, they are stunned, over it, they die"

This. Nobody even bothered to take an expensive unit or character, because pretty much everyone was running an Assassin using Polymorphine, or a Swooping Hawk Exarch, with a Vortex Grenade.

It was only balanced insomuch as everyone had a unit that could alt-control-delete one opposing player's unit off of the table on T1, nearly guaranteed.

You guys played with awful people, lol.

I literally never played in any games where all the broken stuff like Vortex Grenades, or Virus Grenades, etc, were used. No tournaments or events allowed any of that stuff. Not even the friendly games had them. Why would you want the virus bomb? What fun is it to either do absolutely nothing, or table the whole army with one piece of gear?

It's starting to sound like a failure of individual character and values, not a failure of the rule system of 2nd.

And that's the problem with how 2nd was designed. It was very much based on a 'gentlemans agreement', even if not said, on how hard you'd bring it. It wasn't structured for a game where you didn't hash this gak out before the game, or played people with wildly different ideas of how to build an army.

Later editions, while still not very balanced, curbed the ridiculous unit and even army delete abilities that were in 2nd edition.

So, basically, you're saying that the problem with 2nd Edition is that the 40K hobby is too fully of mealy mouthed, slack-jawed pimply cretins who need a virtual minder to keep them in check?



Fair enough. Having posted on Dakka long enough, I buy it.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
So, basically, you're saying that the problem with 2nd Edition is that the 40K hobby is too fully of mealy mouthed, slack-jawed pimply cretins who need a virtual minder to keep them in check?

More that the 40K hobby includes people who feel that the game rules outline what is allowed in the game, and it shouldn't be just taken for granted that players will all impose the same artificial limitations on those rules.

I played plenty of games in 2nd edition without Psykers, or without special characters because opponents requested it. I also played plenty of games where we designed the hardest lists we could, because that's the sort of game that the two of us wanted to play.

Insulting people just because they want to play a different type of game to you is ridiculous. The key to having fun in this (and pretty much any game is just to find like-minded opponents.

The behavior he's describing is deliberately trying to curb the fun of others. This isn't about differing gaming philosophies. It's about the difference between understanding what the entire reason we play any kind of multiplayer games at all is.

There's no ridiculous about calling people on that kind of behavior. The house and tournament rules that were in effect everywhere I ever played back then came into effect so that everyone could enjoy the experience of gaming. If peoples' only memories of 2nd Edition 40K was virus bomb spam, or other such nonsense, they weren't having any fun, which sort of precludes the idea that both sides were willing to actually commit to both sides having fun.

Hence, they played with awful people. It's a fairly simple equation. if you and your friends had agreed to play with everything the game offered, then that's cool. But you also described playing games with agreements to leave out the more ridiculous wargear.

It's just a basic feat of values to understand that nearly every game in existence has a flaw in its rules somewhere, and to exploit those flaws to take advantage makes you a bad person. I mean, otherwise, you just endorse the behavior of people who exploit or hack video games with the sole purpose of griefing people. It's the same basic behavior.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The behavior he's describing is deliberately trying to curb the fun of others. This isn't about differing gaming philosophies. It's about the difference between understanding what the entire reason we play any kind of multiplayer games at all is.

There's no ridiculous about calling people on that kind of behavior. The house and tournament rules that were in effect everywhere I ever played back then came into effect so that everyone could enjoy the experience of gaming. If peoples' only memories of 2nd Edition 40K was virus bomb spam, or other such nonsense, they weren't having any fun, which sort of precludes the idea that both sides were willing to actually commit to both sides having fun.

Hence, they played with awful people. It's a fairly simple equation. if you and your friends had agreed to play with everything the game offered, then that's cool. But you also described playing games with agreements to leave out the more ridiculous wargear.

It's just a basic feat of values to understand that nearly every game in existence has a flaw in its rules somewhere, and to exploit those flaws to take advantage makes you a bad person. I mean, otherwise, you just endorse the behavior of people who exploit or hack video games with the sole purpose of griefing people. It's the same basic behavior.

Except it's not a flaw in a rule, an exploit, or hacking.

It's literally coded into the game itself

You are saying that by taking X, you are a cheater.

When the reality is, by imposing your artificial limits, you are the one trying to hack the game to your own way of playing.

A game should be balanced, so that artificial limits are not needed in the least, but yet still fun.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The behavior he's describing is deliberately trying to curb the fun of others.

No it isn't.

Most of the ridiculous nastiness in 2nd edition did have ways to counter it. Vortex Grenades had Vortex Detonators. Virus could be minimised by not bunching your units up. Assassins could be pounded into the dirt with lascannons. Eventually.


For a lot of us, the fun was in building the nastiest list you could, and trying to figure out how to cope with whatever nastiness your opponent happened to throw on the table.


If players want to agree to limit which game rules will apply, that's up to them. But the 'default' for any game is to play the game as presented.

If peoples' only memories of 2nd Edition 40K was virus bomb spam, or other such nonsense, they weren't having any fun, which sort of precludes the idea that both sides were willing to actually commit to both sides having fun.

And yet here I am, with rather fond memories of the silliness that I encountered in 2nd edition.

My first tournament in 2nd edition, my first game was against an all-Bloodclaw army with Jump Packs, and all equipped with chainswords and powerfists. I was annihilated in 2 turns. It was hilarious, and awesome, and a wonderful learning experience.

The game is what you make it. Who exactly do you think you are to tell people whether or not they are having fun?


The over-the-top silliness was, for many of us, exactly what made 2nd edition fun.

As the OP, I feel obligated to post something to show that I'm still present and alive. But it is with great regret that I cannot add anything myself that would contribute to the ongoing discussion, as I have no experience with any edition but the 6th.

Starting in 3rd Edition, it sounds like 3rd really setup the "modern" trend of 40k, when it differentiated it's rules to a trend still going today. I remember making up all sorts of fun rules and ideas with friends, and how doing things "in the spirit of the game" was encouraged. For us, it was a "creative thinkers" game, and since we all loved RPGS like 2nd ed. DND, we came up with fun mission ideas, campaigns, special characters, allies allowances with sufficient, story driven purposes, etc. Basically, what the group agreed to, was ok.

I like 6th edition because, amidst the few rules that are kinda wonky (see charge distances), it captures spirit and feeling of the older editions, where cool, random stuff happens that keeps the game fun. There are definitely different 40k environments, and I think the game functions quite differently if you are playing for fun, casually, campaigns, or pure competitiveness.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I am also a firm believer that a certain amount of "imbalance" keeps the overall game "in balance." By shifting the power, the meta keeps changing and lists are constantly changing and responding. This makes each new release change the face of the game.

Second edition was fun at the time, I would not want to go back to it. I would not mid going back to 5th and keeping the big models in apocalypse. Sixth edition is getting kind of weird.

I started to play in 5th but have seen the rules of 4th being used and read through them also. So far I like the rules for 6th edition. I've enjoyed using these rules and like them more than I did the rules in 5th. So 6th for me.

I like 2nd, honestly, but it's balance was worse then anything within the past fourth editions! (6th, 5th, 4th, and third!). With so much that could cause hell in a bad way, less manticore wounds your army, and more "Oh, your psykers are fighting my nids? Well Psychic scream, every turn they gotta roll 2D6 and if they under their toughness, they are stunned, over it, they die"

So yeah, the thing is, second was actually far better balanced than 3rd through 5th. What were your demons going to do against GK in 5th? GK could literally keep you from even deploying. Not playing a Blood Angels assault list in third? Enjoy your hefty loss. In each of those editions there were armies that could do things no one else could do and there were zero effective counters with them.

While second ed definitely had a lot of problems, the beauty of it was that every army had something every bit as stupid and rediculous as the next, and if that didn't work you could always take, rad/virus/vortex grenades to level the field. The balance of second came from the fact that at any army could set up a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario. It was basically, "You're taking Abbadon and his Terminator body guard again?" Cool. I'll prep my Eldar skimmers with "pop-up" rules and buckets of sustained fire dice, or "I'll let my bike mounted tech marines with Virus grenades know it's game time. lol So yeah, if both players wanted to be jerks, the game was only likely to last a turn or two but the point is, you had options.

Let me tell a story that illustrates why 2nd was so fun:

Back in the day, you got your Titans from Armourcast and while you had to have a certain amount of points before you could use them, there was no such thing as Apocolypse yet so you could use them in a normal game. I had just gotten a Reaver and my buddy had just bought a Shock Attack gun and about a million new Orks so we had a mega-game. Being very nervous about the Titan my buddy brought a Vortex grenade which he unleashed on turn two. Vortex was a small template that bounced around the table until it scattered off the board or dissipated. Anything it touched was simply removed from play. He botched his throw but the darn thing scattered uncomfortably close to my Titan so I had it move to the other side of the table. At which point he hit the Titan with his Shock Attack gun. At the time the gun bypassed Void Shields so he hit me easily and rolled the result that basically said that the Princeps suddenly had a bunch of terrified Snottlings appear on his head out of nowhere and the vehicle was now out of control.

So on one side of the table there's a vortex bouncing around so erratically that all of his orks were trying to run to the other side of the table. The side where the Titan is now romper stomping all over the place. At one point it kicked my predator and destroyed it. The vehicle damage table returned the "turret flys up in the air and comes down with a huge crash". Upon landing the turret killed a bunch of Gretchin who broke and fled back in the direction of the vortex. Hillarity ensued and he ended up having to get the Gretchin into CC with (of all things) a polymorphine Eversore just so that his boys could shoot into the CC in the hopes of killing the assasin. The entire time the Titan is still running around like a maniac in the background.

The Ork attack failed and he killed all his Gretchin without hurting the assasin. At which point he cast the "Foot of Gork" psychic power. It was literally a giant green foot shaped template that represented one of the Ork gods stomping on an opponent. We just stopped and looked at the table and started laughing. On one side of the table the vortex had finally spun itself out but had wiped out everything on that flank. On the other side the Titan had finally come to a halt but had little to shoot at because all of the Orks had run into each other mid-table and were bunched too close to my own men and then a giant green foot came down and crushed everything. lol Good times if you had the sense of humor for it.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:
You are saying that by taking X, you are a cheater.

Reading is an important skill.

I never said anything about cheating. I just said that intentionally taking the stuff in the game that was broken, in order to subvert the fun of your opponent, makes you a bad person.

Just like exploiting bugs in multiplayer videogames isn't technically cheating, but it definitely makes you a bad person.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

insaniak wrote:
The game is what you make it. Who exactly do you think you are to tell people whether or not they are having fun?
.

I didn't tell anybody anything. They said it in their own words.

Beyond the bare-boned codex's, looking through all the old codex's I've acquired 3rd edition seems to be the best.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Reading is an important skill.

I never said anything about cheating. I just said that intentionally taking the stuff in the game that was broken, in order to subvert the fun of your opponent, makes you a bad person.

Just like exploiting bugs in multiplayer videogames isn't technically cheating, but it definitely makes you a bad person.

I'm sorry but people have problem with this because it's just too subjective.
If I take a single vendetta am I a bad person? Two? Two + helldrake? Three helldrakes and a doom scythe? Full French bakery? How many of those against DE, against Necrons and how many against GK?

If I go to play random people in FLGS should I make changes to my army before every game after looking at my enemies army and exact build?

Different person, different opinion. How will you decide what is wrong and what is right so each and every person is happy? Are you sure you're just not creating a different imbalance that suits you more but somebody else is getting the other end of the stick?
It may be doable in a tight, closed group but how do you do it with each and every person out there?
There are a lot of stories about additional "balancing" rules in FLGSs or in small local tournies that are simply horrible.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:
You are saying that by taking X, you are a cheater.

Reading is an important skill.

I never said anything about cheating. I just said that intentionally taking the stuff in the game that was broken, in order to subvert the fun of your opponent, makes you a bad person.

Just like exploiting bugs in multiplayer videogames isn't technically cheating, but it definitely makes you a bad person.

I mean, otherwise, you just endorse the behavior of people who exploit or hack video games with the sole purpose of griefing people.

Hack: . To gain access to (a computer file or network) illegally or without authorization

Exploit: To make use of selfishly or unethically

Typing is an important skill as well to convey one's meaning properly

Of note exploiting bugs IS considered cheating, as many companies can and will ban you if you are caught doing so from online games, and hacking a game very much so will get you banned, which is why everything you stated conveyed "Cheater"

How would exploiting a game's bugs, which are part of the design of the game (albeit a poor one), be any more or less cheating than using something in a table top game that was also poorly designed?

You're splitting hairs here, son.

And those companies ban those players caught exploiting because it creates a negative experience with the rest of the gaming population.

Wait. sounds familiar with gaming groups making house rules to enhance the playing experience of everyone there.

Aww, wait. So I was right all along? Yeah, thought so.

I wouldn't say using an "overpowered" unit is the same as "exploiting a bug", it's actually closer to sticking to BR/DMR/pistol/bestest weapon in Halo/shooters, or using pre-patched Ryu in SF4, neither are/were bug(s), they are/were just simply made too good. "Exploiting a bug" in WH40k would be, well, look at some of those crazy debates in YMDC, for example, drop pod doors and TLOS(but let's not bring that debate in here, just using it as an example!); basically exploiting a poorly written rule/rules to their advantage is the equivalent to "exploiting a bug". I wouldn't necessarily call someone "cheating" for using what is intended, if person B doesn't like the fact that my necrons can EL/RP, should I stop doing that so I could be a "good person"?

Baronyu wrote:
I wouldn't say using an "overpowered" unit is the same as "exploiting a bug", it's actually closer to sticking to BR/DMR/pistol/bestest weapon in Halo/shooters, or using pre-patched Ryu in SF4, neither are/were bug(s), they are/were just simply made too good. "Exploiting a bug" in WH40k would be, well, look at some of those crazy debates in YMDC, for example, drop pod doors and TLOS(but let's not bring that debate in here, just using it as an example!); basically exploiting a poorly written rule/rules to their advantage is the equivalent to "exploiting a bug". I wouldn't necessarily call someone "cheating" for using what is intended, if person B doesn't like the fact that my necrons can EL/RP, should I stop doing that so I could be a "good person"?

Agreed. Using stronger units, is no different than min/maxing your characters in an MMO. Most "Bugs" in 40k Are fixed Via FAQ or Errata.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
How would exploiting a game's bugs, which are part of the design of the game (albeit a poor one), be any more or less cheating than using something in a table top game that was also poorly designed?

You're splitting hairs here, son.

And those companies ban those players caught exploiting because it creates a negative experience with the rest of the gaming population.

Wait. sounds familiar with gaming groups making house rules to enhance the playing experience of everyone there.

Aww, wait. So I was right all along? Yeah, thought so.

Not at all, the equivalent is not even there.

I'm sure you can compare such analogues in your own head, and believe me I don't mind if you do so, but your analogues are not even close to whats happening on the table

This is more akin to being able to choose your own weapon in an online game. You've got your "Weak and horrible gun" needing of balance, your "Perfectly alright and does well" gun, and then your "Oh god why is this gun so strong it's so freakin awesome."

There is nothing about exploiting anything, an exploit would be hiding within like a mountain (Impassible terrain) and being able to shoot through it without retaliation. It is not the same as "Choose your own weapon"

I mean sure, if you have to house rule that you cannot shoot through the mountain if that exploit was there, but if you need a house rule saying "You can not deep strike into a mountain, and then shoot people from within it without being able to be shot." It just means you actually need proper rules within the game itself, house ruling is only going to go so far when people won't accept your house rule.

Still not right.

You don't get it, so I'll break it down to the simplest terms possible, and then I'll let it go, because you'll have a snarky comeback even though it will be as ludicrously wrong as what you just posted.

Online gaming companies ban people who exploit the mistakes they made while designing the game because they recognize that providing the best possible gaming environment is what will make their game successful, (bolded for your benefit) because it makes the game more fun and players having fun will continue to play, and recommend the game to their friends.

Gaming groups/stores/tournament organizers back in the day banned the stuff that were game design mistakes by Games Workshop because they recognized that doing so would provide the best possible gaming environment, ensuring everyone had fun, which would in turn incentivize players to continue collecting models and playing the game.

It's the same. Exact. Concept. I empathize if you still don't understand. That's an awful situation to be stuck in.

Only started playing in 4th, and I can't remember much about it.

I enjoyed 5th edition enough, though the Wound Allocation was a bit silly (can't say I didn't [ab]use it though ).

My original views on 6th was that it was significantly worse than 5th, mainly with the addition of Hull Points, moving models from the front, and the changes to outflanking taking a lot of the potency out of my armies, and reducing the fun/viability of certain themes I ran with in my list. Also, the original superiority of fliers was really annoying. I also felt it was too like WHFB. WHFB's great, don't get me wrong, but I play WHFB because it's different to 40k, it's a change. I don't want two game systems that are the same.

Now that stuff is being updated again, and being brought back up to speed and back into line, I'm starting to enjoy 6th edition more. Fliers are become less and less OP as everyone else gets some decent Anti-Air and the new codices have not only been, on the whole, fairly balanced, but they've also gone to certain (varying) extents to redress problems that were suffered in the initial transition to 6th. I hope this trend continues, especially for the new Ork, and particularly, Tyranid, codex.

So, in summary, I'd say, at the moment, I'd still want 5th back but I have a feeling this opinion will have changed in a year or two.

I know some of you young'uns that live in today's far more dynamic and fast moving world don't understand how things worked 20 years ago, lol. And some who might even be old enough, just have forgotten.

But a video game can be patched in a manner of weeks. An errata can be posted online and easily distributed and disseminated. That sort of quick fix never existed back in the day. And certainly wouldn't have been considered a priority in the tabletop gaming industry. The guys at Games Workshop had never seen Internet trolls, so they figured that players would just work that sort of thing out on their own because they played for fun (back then), so why wouldn't everyone else?

Foolish, I know. But it was a different time.

... they figured that players would just work that sort of thing out on their own because they played for fun (back then), so why wouldn't everyone else?

Foolish, I know. But it was a different time.

QFT

I really miss those days. I feel like with 6th they are trying to get back to that but it's probably an uphill battle.

You don't get it, so I'll break it down to the simplest terms possible, and then I'll let it go, because you'll have a snarky comeback even though it will be as ludicrously wrong as what you just posted.

Considering that you've been proven wrong on your vernacular several times, I suppose you would think its wrong

Online gaming companies ban people who exploit the mistakes they made while designing the game because they recognize that providing the best possible gaming environment is what will make their game successful, (bolded for your benefit) because it makes the game more fun and players having fun will continue to play, and recommend the game to their friends.

Except taking X model is not an exploit of any kind (Nor would your vernacular not be accepted anywhere else, despite your twisted definition of it) it's something that is imbalanced. Say it with me, Imbalanced

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/imbalanced Here, have a dictionary.

It's the same. Exact. Concept. I empathize if you still don't understand. That's an awful situation to be stuck in.

Keep thinking your right, I enjoy seeing what comes from your personal little worldview

But a video game can be patched in a manner of weeks. An errata can be posted online and easily distributed and disseminated. That sort of quick fix never existed back in the day. And certainly wouldn't have been considered a priority in the tabletop gaming industry

And yet they don't errata weak and horrible models, they don't errata the big bad heldrakes and the purifiers and things of that nature. They fix the bugs, the actual exploits within the system. They don't patch up models which is what you keep saying exploits are.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
I know some of you young'uns that live in today's far more dynamic and fast moving world don't understand how things worked 20 years ago, lol. And some who might even be old enough, just have forgotten.

But a video game can be patched in a manner of weeks. An errata can be posted online and easily distributed and disseminated. That sort of quick fix never existed back in the day. And certainly wouldn't have been considered a priority in the tabletop gaming industry. The guys at Games Workshop had never seen Internet trolls, so they figured that players would just work that sort of thing out on their own because they played for fun (back then), so why wouldn't everyone else?

Foolish, I know. But it was a different time.

Your horse is high, sir, it's hurting my neck just reading your post.

You get all kinds of players playing all kinds of war games. Some personalities enjoy different aspects of a game. To say the flaw of a game's balance rests with those players however, is faulty reasoning. If a game is unbalanced it's because of the way its rules are written and the game is designed. Period.

Personally I don't like the way we always have a period where some codices are written for an old edition, and some are not. That, to me, is where the balance issues lie. What I would like GW to do (in an ideal world) is release a rulebook alongside updated codices for that edition, all at the same time. Not gonna happen though

Ironically it seems GW is trying to do exactly that, IE making all the codices current by releasing them so quickly. Still doesn't guarantee a product without tons of flaws.

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Nor would your vernacular not be accepted anywhere else

Okay, so you're saying it would be accepted. Good, at least we agree.

Keep thinking your right,

My right what?



Sorry, I know I said I was gonna stop, but that was too much fun, considering how much you were harping on language usage. Sorta walked yourself right into that one. See, there's a difference between when you try to argue semantics, and when you actually have a real argument.

Regardless, I'm like a shark in bloody waters with stuff like this, so I need to step out of this conversation before you make it get out of control.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

ZebioLizard2 wrote:Nor would your vernacular not be accepted anywhere else

Okay, so you're saying it would be accepted. Good, at least we agree.

Keep thinking your right,

My right what?



Sorry, I know I said I was gonna stop, but that was too much fun, considering how much you were harping on language usage. Sorta walked yourself right into that one. See, there's a difference between when you try to argue semantics, and when you actually have a real argument.

Regardless, I'm like a shark in bloody waters with stuff like this, so I need to step out of this conversation before you make it get out of control.

I'm not sure where you had a legitimate argument to begin with, also thanks for the little stealth insult at the end. Good job

Gamers are like longbeards, things were always better in the good old days.

Tycho wrote:

"You're taking Abbadon and his Terminator body guard again?" Cool. I'll prep my Eldar skimmers with "pop-up" rules and buckets of sustained fire dice, or "I'll let my bike mounted tech marines with Virus grenades know it's game time.

Virus grenades didn't work against Marines... That was part of why they were considered so bad. They only affected models that weren't wearing a helmet... which pretty much meant entire guard, tyranid and ork armies, and not really anyone else.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
But a video game can be patched in a manner of weeks. An errata can be posted online and easily distributed and disseminated. That sort of quick fix never existed back in the day.

Can't speak for RT, but it most certainly existed in 2nd edition. White Dwarf at that point included an FAQ section every month, and they introduced several rather big changes to the game (limiting how many copies of each Wargear card could be used, limiting the number of 'field' saves a model could have, removing the 'Virus Outbreak' strategy card, just off the top of my head) through that FAQ section.