So I've heard enough about 7th already to know I'm not interested in GW having my money for 7th. Sorry, but I'm officially done.

Because people will get on my back about this, here's the trick: I like 40K. I don't like Games Workshop.

But that's not what this thread is about. Before the white knights come in proclaiming my manifest evilness against the infallible Gee Dubs, I want to know if 3rd or 4th are worth going back to - and, most importantly, how one could go about introducing a gaming group to these games.

Ok, so 3rd and 4th. What's good and bad, and are they worth getting into over 5th? Obviously there are places I can go online to get the older books to play, so that's not really an issue...

In short, are they worth getting people into over 5th, and would I need any additional material - I know 2nd needed certain cards and stuff.

Thanks all in advance.

Started in 3rd edition and retrospectively it was probably the worst 40k had to offer. 4th was an improvement but overall not much better.

Honestly I don't see what people expect? Every edition had it's game breaking lists. If you go back to 3rd you will complain about BA rhino rush or the seeding swarm.

Don't let the internet mass hysterics get to you.

3rd? Real men play RT.

Depends on how much you like melee? 3rd was awesome for melee beasts. 2 armies mounted up for a fast paced assault fest.

There's a thing called "one page 40k", where the simplified the rules down to 1 page. I haven't tried it, but you might consider it.

Every edition of 40k has problems. They fix some, break others. 3rd is also hard to quantify, as it was a moving target. Those were the days when we were getting new rules, units, and armies in White Dwarf. And while we did get the cosmic reset button with all the army lists in the core book, once codexes started coming out there was a lot of codex creep. Where not only was there a divide between armies that had received their book, but the later books were almost always better then the earlier books.

If you and your group dislike the current edition, sit down and talk about what you do want. The old ones are not necessarily better. And if you are going to start tweaking and homebrewing, I might use one of the more modern versions as a base.

 Exergy wrote:
Depends on how much you like melee? 3rd was awesome for melee beasts. 2 armies mounted up for a fast paced assault fest.

Yeah, but aspirations towards melee in the 3rd were very low. A chapter master with WS5 and 4 power sword attacks was one of the stronger choices.

I don't see how it could be every worth it to go back to 3rd or 4th. The money, time and energy to convince your buddies to play 3rd or 4th and get all necessary materials (if you don't want to pirate them) is better invested in applying some house rules to the 7th, if you feel bothered about some elements like unbound or allies or detachments.

5th was better than 3rd.

I wouldn't like to play 3rd. Rhino rush puts me off a lot.

I've played since RT and 3rd was by far my least favorite. I actually liked 6th. (It just had a lot of codex balance issues.) But yeah, I'm sitting 7th out.

Pretty much all the 40k players at our club have migrated to 2nd edition. In comparison to the modern game it's ridiculously cheap to get into- the games are much smaller and the books are hardly anything on ebay.
We feel the same as you. We all love 40k, but preferred it when gamers ran GW.
Havig said that,I do have a soft spot for 3rd too. A very simple, fun game, especially if you stick to the army lists in the back of the rule book.

I was aware that every edition had it's problems, I was just interested in knowing where they lay with earlier editions.

We're all more or less casual gamers here, but none of us want to dump money on 7th. We're all familiar with 6th and know 5th well enough, but none of us are too familiar with anything earlier. Hence the thread.

People saying "You might as well play 7th" are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard, or a Carnifex - well, a Carnifex.

I think 6th with some refinement could have been great.

Problem with 2nd is that most modern stuff (including entire armies, and no I don't mean Imperial Knights - I mean Tau and Necrons) would be unplayable, and that might force out some players. I'd recommend staying with 6th until you feel the need to update - Some folks in my LGS kept playing 5th and, in retrospect, it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.
3rd took away all options, character (not characters) and anything else I found interesting and kind of made a "Generichammer." It was a simple, fast game that accommodated larger battles.

 MWHistorian wrote:
It was a simple, fast game that accommodated larger battles.

The third edition was probably the worst concerning internal balance of codices. Anything that was able to move over 6" was horribly overcosted and generally people didn't bother with half of their respective codices. Not because there was a OP unit (the relative strength of a unit was comparably tame back then) that got spammed but because there was so much junk no one bothered with.

There's a second edition wave going on at my FLGS. It's about a 50 / 50 split between people who love 6th edition and people who hate it.

You can probably guess what armies each side runs.

Honestly, with all this talk about openness in the new edition and being able to take what you want, it really sucks that half the models are still impractical on the table. Not being able to assault out of a Rhino really puts a damper on things.

 Darkseid wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
It was a simple, fast game that accommodated larger battles.

The third edition was probably the worst concerning internal balance of codices. Anything that was able to move over 6" was horribly overcosted and generally people didn't bother with half of their respective codices. Not because there was a OP unit (the relative strength of a unit was comparably tame back then) that got spammed but because there was so much junk no one bothered with.

Agreed. I didn't like 3rd at all and after a few games I sat out on 3rd.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
I was aware that every edition had it's problems, I was just interested in knowing where they lay with earlier editions.

We're all more or less casual gamers here, but none of us want to dump money on 7th. We're all familiar with 6th and know 5th well enough, but none of us are too familiar with anything earlier. Hence the thread.

People saying "You might as well play 7th" are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard, or a Carnifex - well, a Carnifex.

Pshah, the Carnifex will have its revenge.

Third was (for me) all about:

- Rhino rush Marines and CSM
- Star cannon spam
- Iron Warriors pounding armies off the tabletop with impunity
- Running a Mutable Tyranid build and wishing that I could use some of the cooler units but not being able to because spam was so effective
- Sweeping Advance into combat was too powerful
- Insane Codex creep (looking at you, Tyranids, CSM 3.5 and Blood Angels)

Interestingly, not much has really changed from the above other than some of the names. Given that the internet wasn't what it is today back then, I dread to think what we would be saying if 3rd were released at the end of its lifecycle tomorrow.

That said, if you pick up 3rd and play with the armies in the BBB only, you might be pleasantly surprised as they were all fairly tame. Not balanced (very much not in fact), but rather everything was slow and fairly easy to counter because of that.

MadmanMSU wrote:
There's a thing called "one page 40k", where the simplified the rules down to 1 page. I haven't tried it, but you might consider it.

It's good. Fast to learn, fast to play, balanced, and you can use melee.

I am currently gearing up to play games of 4th edition with my couple of close friends who are interested in 40K. I have nearly everything from the era just after 4th dropped, so it allows me to keep using all the great stuff I have ALREADY spent hard-earned money on.

Also, I am the owner of the only skimmer army (Eldar) that will take the field, and I do not spam them, so that particular problem from 4th is avoided.

Of course, I also own one of the nifty "Battle Bibles" available online, which collects all the rules and codex stats for everything in 2nd edition into one large document (even Sisters, Squats and the available Necrons of the time). So I am eager to get back to the days of the edition that was out when I first got into the game, and play some skirmish-level 40K again instead of giant armies.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
So I've heard enough about 7th already to know I'm not interested in GW having my money for 7th. Sorry, but I'm officially done.

Because people will get on my back about this, here's the trick: I like 40K. I don't like Games Workshop.

But that's not what this thread is about. Before the white knights come in proclaiming my manifest evilness against the infallible Gee Dubs, I want to know if 3rd or 4th are worth going back to - and, most importantly, how one could go about introducing a gaming group to these games.

Ok, so 3rd and 4th. What's good and bad, and are they worth getting into over 5th? Obviously there are places I can go online to get the older books to play, so that's not really an issue...

In short, are they worth getting people into over 5th, and would I need any additional material - I know 2nd needed certain cards and stuff.

Thanks all in advance.

3rd is probably best avoided. If you thought 6th was broken for shooting, it is nothing compared to how over the top brokenly all powerful assault was in 3rd. If you ever shot at all other than an initial round of fire, the Ork, Nid, Blood Angel, BT, Space Wolf player was doing something really really really wrong. Super duper sweeping advances that could potentially carry assault marines the entire length of a 6 foot board.

3rd with the Trial Assault rules fixed a lot of that, but flat 3rd? Avoid it like the plague (even after building a Black Templar army I would not play without the TAR, as it was just to stupidly easy with 0 tactics ever as an assault army, you didn't even need to prioritize what you assaulted. Rhino rush 12", then 2" disembark, then 6" assault. Yay for 20" assaults, that were even farther with turbo boosts or speed freak lists. Coupled with smoke launchers forcing everything to glancing, you had what amounted to almost invulnerable delivery vehicles disgorging a horde of cc specialists that could almost sit outside your range before disgorging into combat and annihilating everything if they got the charge off).

4th, yeah, maybe with some codex tweaks/fixes.

 Darkseid wrote:
Started in 3rd edition and retrospectively it was probably the worst 40k had to offer. 4th was an improvement but overall not much better.

Honestly I don't see what people expect? Every edition had it's game breaking lists. If you go back to 3rd you will complain about BA rhino rush or the seeding swarm.

Don't let the internet mass hysterics get to you.

QFT


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I think 6th with some refinement could have been great.

If you ignore the FOC... they have that, called 7th.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

Wait...what? Speaking of assumptions.
I played the crap out of RT and 2nd.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

Wait...what? Speaking of assumptions.
I played the crap out of RT and 2nd.

Yeah RT was a complete mess... fun but just off the wall (though I do miss the old RT/2nd save system).

Play 5th ed and bring in a few changes 6th (and the clarifications from 7th) and you'd be golden.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
3rd? Real men play RT.

Real Men play second edition. Rogue Trader is sooo dated/semi-unplayable.

7th Edition inspired me to permanently shelve my GK and get to work on a Genestealer Cult army. And it's a good thing too- Genestealer Cults are really piking awesome.

 Mysterious Pants wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
3rd? Real men play RT.

Real Men play second edition. Rogue Trader is sooo dated/semi-unplayable.

7th Edition inspired me to permanently shelve my GK and get to work on a Genestealer Cult army. And it's a good thing too- Genestealer Cults are really piking awesome.

Real men and women play apocalypse sized games using FFG RPG rules.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

I’m with MWHistorian on this one. RT was closer to a RPG then a wargame, and my experience with 2nd matches his.

I’m not going to speak for every old timer out there, but for myself and my group of friends at the time, that’s a fair evaluation of RT/2nd.

 Lobukia wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I think 6th with some refinement could have been great.

If you ignore the FOC... they have that, called 7th.

So don't bother buying 7th, got it

 Accolade wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I think 6th with some refinement could have been great.

If you ignore the FOC... they have that, called 7th.

No, 7th is going the opposite way I meant.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
So I've heard enough about 7th already to know I'm not interested in GW having my money for 7th. Sorry, but I'm officially done.

Because people will get on my back about this, here's the trick: I like 40K. I don't like Games Workshop.

But that's not what this thread is about. Before the white knights come in proclaiming my manifest evilness against the infallible Gee Dubs, I want to know if 3rd or 4th are worth going back to - and, most importantly, how one could go about introducing a gaming group to these games.

Ok, so 3rd and 4th. What's good and bad, and are they worth getting into over 5th? Obviously there are places I can go online to get the older books to play, so that's not really an issue...

In short, are they worth getting people into over 5th, and would I need any additional material - I know 2nd needed certain cards and stuff.

Thanks all in advance.

3rd is probably best avoided. If you thought 6th was broken for shooting, it is nothing compared to how over the top brokenly all powerful assault was in 3rd. If you ever shot at all other than an initial round of fire, the Ork, Nid, Blood Angel, BT, Space Wolf player was doing something really really really wrong. Super duper sweeping advances that could potentially carry assault marines the entire length of a 6 foot board.

3rd with the Trial Assault rules fixed a lot of that, but flat 3rd? Avoid it like the plague (even after building a Black Templar army I would not play without the TAR, as it was just to stupidly easy with 0 tactics ever as an assault army, you didn't even need to prioritize what you assaulted. Rhino rush 12", then 2" disembark, then 6" assault. Yay for 20" assaults, that were even farther with turbo boosts or speed freak lists. Coupled with smoke launchers forcing everything to glancing, you had what amounted to almost invulnerable delivery vehicles disgorging a horde of cc specialists that could almost sit outside your range before disgorging into combat and annihilating everything if they got the charge off).

4th, yeah, maybe with some codex tweaks/fixes.

This is my thought, though I seem to recall a TVR (Trial Vehicle Rules) that came out around the same time.

4th wasn't that bad at all from what I remember, though there was target priority checks and a couple of goofy codices.

 Mysterious Pants wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
3rd? Real men play RT.

Real Men play second edition. Rogue Trader is sooo dated/semi-unplayable.

7th Edition inspired me to permanently shelve my GK and get to work on a Genestealer Cult army. And it's a good thing too- Genestealer Cults are really piking awesome.

Genestealer Cults ate my Ultramarines so often, it was next to impossible to get them before they got into cc.

Good times...

Does nobody play the pancake rules.??

http://www.scribd.com/doc/77874047/Warhammer-40k-Leaked-6th-Ed-Rulebook

nobody wrote:


This is my thought, though I seem to recall a TVR (Trial Vehicle Rules) that came out around the same time.

4th wasn't that bad at all from what I remember, though there was target priority checks and a couple of goofy codices.

I liked the VDR (Vehicle Design Rules) stuff that was out around 3rd, I'm not sure if you mean those. The no assault after disembark was in the TAR if I remember right.

The VDR could be broken a little, but on the whole they were pretty good and a fun way to add a little variety to army lists.

When you speak of third edition, you need to realize that there was not one single era of third edition like there was in the other editions, due to the codex reset.

Must people with dim views of 3rd recall the middle chunk of it, with codex creep,OTT assault rules combined with powerful (and cheap) assault units, and virtually no balance within or between codices.

That's not what you'd want to play. To enjoy 3rd edition, play one of two ways.

1: (the high energy way): play with all of the material ever produced for 3rd edition. Every codex, subcodex, WD article, TAR/TVR, etc, etc. Prepare to introduce some basic comp, as those solve some of the problems but not the incredible inbalance available.

2: (the boring but balanced way) play straight bookhammer. The only rules you use are the BBB (and if need be, stripped down necron/tau books) The TAR and TVR mostly corrected flaws introduced by the codices, not the core rules themselves. (although the core rules do have some quirks.)

Bookhammer is admittedly generic, without a lot of options, but it allows for most people with decent collections to set up and play a 1500 pt game in less than two hours.

Thanks Polonius, that's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Thanks Polonius, that's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

Basic book 3rd edition with the codices is an almost unplayable mess. Not worth it, IMO.

But bookhammer 3rd edition offers the simplest and cleanest rules and army lists ever available for 40k. Think Kings of War style simplicity.

It also, at the other end of the content spectrum, offers the widest diversity of army lists (although not total units) ever available for 40k.

Sounds workable. I mean, houseruling wouldn't be out of the question, and it's probably better than dropping significantly more on 7th.

Xyptc wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
I was aware that every edition had it's problems, I was just interested in knowing where they lay with earlier editions.

We're all more or less casual gamers here, but none of us want to dump money on 7th. We're all familiar with 6th and know 5th well enough, but none of us are too familiar with anything earlier. Hence the thread.

People saying "You might as well play 7th" are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard, or a Carnifex - well, a Carnifex.

Pshah, the Carnifex will have its revenge.

Third was (for me) all about:

- Rhino rush Marines and CSM
- Star cannon spam
- Iron Warriors pounding armies off the tabletop with impunity
- Running a Mutable Tyranid build and wishing that I could use some of the cooler units but not being able to because spam was so effective
- Sweeping Advance into combat was too powerful
- Insane Codex creep (looking at you, Tyranids, CSM 3.5 and Blood Angels)

Interestingly, not much has really changed from the above other than some of the names. Given that the internet wasn't what it is today back then, I dread to think what we would be saying if 3rd were released at the end of its lifecycle tomorrow.

That said, if you pick up 3rd and play with the armies in the BBB only, you might be pleasantly surprised as they were all fairly tame. Not balanced (very much not in fact), but rather everything was slow and fairly easy to counter because of that.

Gotta agree with this. Avoid the infamous rise-tinting, 3rd was defiantly the worst rule set 40k has yet had.

I actually already decided to play either 3rd or 4th. I already have the books and the guy I normally play with is fed up enough with the way things have gone in newer editions to join me in my retro gaming. Really, the fourth edition SM codex and 3.5 Chaos Marine codex are two of my all time favorites. I will get 7th edition because I have already reserved a copy but I'm not sure that I will ever play it.

Hey, MWHistorian, I guess all those years playing RT and 2nd edition together don't count because someone online said we were too young and called us liars. Since you know us so well, how old are we? And yes, RT was a D100 random chart mess. 2nd edition was fun, but a hero centric mess that had close combat lasting an eternity each round. I'm sticking to 6th, the imperfect, but still my favorite edition.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
So I've heard enough about 7th already to know I'm not interested in GW having my money for 7th. Sorry, but I'm officially done.

Because people will get on my back about this, here's the trick: I like 40K. I don't like Games Workshop.

But that's not what this thread is about. Before the white knights come in proclaiming my manifest evilness against the infallible Gee Dubs, I want to know if 3rd or 4th are worth going back to - and, most importantly, how one could go about introducing a gaming group to these games.

Ok, so 3rd and 4th. What's good and bad, and are they worth getting into over 5th? Obviously there are places I can go online to get the older books to play, so that's not really an issue...

In short, are they worth getting people into over 5th, and would I need any additional material - I know 2nd needed certain cards and stuff.

Thanks all in advance.

Personally, with the benefit of hindsight, as surprised at myself as I am to say this, I think 5th would be the better option over 3rd or 4th, particularly if you use all the books published in 5th. 5th probably had the least number of non-viable armies and units of those three editions (hooray 3E ~30pt jump marines, hooray IG being a laughingstock book for both editions, etc) and, as bad as it could get, probably also had the best all around balance (not great, but best of the 3).

There are still several features of 5th I consider highly flawed and in dire need of changing. Wound allocation. Kill points. Vehicle moving & shooting rules, etc to name a few. But both 3E and 4E I think had as many issues with their core rules and much worse army books in terms of functionality (much as I like the fluff and feel of my 3.5E CSM book )

4th's my favourite, although it must be said it favours assault, with Massacre moves and such. Also vehicles are complete deathtraps.

Lord of the Rings. Simply the best rules GW has ever made. Try using them instead of going to another previous edition.

Davor wrote:
Lord of the Rings. Simply the best rules GW has ever made. Try using them instead of going to another previous edition.

I've thought about this in the context of playing Lord of the Rings with WHFB models on circular bases. It gives the fantasy taste of WHFB without the massive ranks of faceless models.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
So I've heard enough about 7th already to know I'm not interested in GW having my money for 7th. Sorry, but I'm officially done.

Because people will get on my back about this, here's the trick: I like 40K. I don't like Games Workshop.

But that's not what this thread is about. Before the white knights come in proclaiming my manifest evilness against the infallible Gee Dubs, I want to know if 3rd or 4th are worth going back to - and, most importantly, how one could go about introducing a gaming group to these games.

Ok, so 3rd and 4th. What's good and bad, and are they worth getting into over 5th? Obviously there are places I can go online to get the older books to play, so that's not really an issue...

In short, are they worth getting people into over 5th, and would I need any additional material - I know 2nd needed certain cards and stuff.

Thanks all in advance.

Personally, with the benefit of hindsight, as surprised at myself as I am to say this, I think 5th would be the better option over 3rd or 4th, particularly if you use all the books published in 5th. 5th probably had the least number of non-viable armies and units of those three editions (hooray 3E ~30pt jump marines, hooray IG being a laughingstock book for both editions, etc) and, as bad as it could get, probably also had the best all around balance (not great, but best of the 3).

There are still several features of 5th I consider highly flawed and in dire need of changing. Wound allocation. Kill points. Vehicle moving & shooting rules, etc to name a few. But both 3E and 4E I think had as many issues with their core rules and much worse army books in terms of functionality (much as I like the fluff and feel of my 3.5E CSM book )

Eh, that's a point actually. In fact, we might work it so Tau and Eldar can use 6th ED books, possibly Orks as well if their new (7th ed) book fits well enough, obviously cutting the things that don't make sense, such as Overwatch, so Tau are actually playable, as is Farsight, while hopefully keeping things balanced. We'll probably Comp if needed, but as I said, we're all pretty casual around here. Maybe keep things like the psychic tables from 6th. Obviously it'll be a process of trial and error, but it's... well, probably better than 7th

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

nobody wrote:


This is my thought, though I seem to recall a TVR (Trial Vehicle Rules) that came out around the same time.

4th wasn't that bad at all from what I remember, though there was target priority checks and a couple of goofy codices.

I liked the VDR (Vehicle Design Rules) stuff that was out around 3rd, I'm not sure if you mean those. The no assault after disembark was in the TAR if I remember right.

The VDR could be broken a little, but on the whole they were pretty good and a fun way to add a little variety to army lists.

Pretty sure TVR is where that rule was, and I think it allowed moving and direct fire ordnance. I need to find the Chapter Approved book.

If you want to go back that far, there's nothing at all in 3rd edition that I'd recommenced it over 4th edition for. Although, I bemusedly remember the days when you always had multiple threads in the tactics forum concerning the fighting against Iron Warriors, and the best ways to do it.

 Bookwrack wrote:
If you want to go back that far, there's nothing at all in 3rd edition that I'd recommenced it over 4th edition for. Although, I bemusedly remember the days when you always had multiple threads in the tactics forum concerning the fighting against Iron Warriors, and the best ways to do it.

Third didn't have target priority :p

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

Wait...what? Speaking of assumptions.
I played the crap out of RT and 2nd.

RT was more like RPG rules but I would hardly call it a mess. It merely had different eras (as the rules developed and matured) to it and overall has less material than the clusterfeth that was 6th or the soon to be piece of gak that is 7th.

2nd was hardly herohammer. You had maybe one or two games where people were getting used to the rules and decked out their characters but overwatch and assault cannons quickly ended that once people got wise.

nobody wrote:

 Bookwrack wrote:
If you want to go back that far, there's nothing at all in 3rd edition that I'd recommenced it over 4th edition for. Although, I bemusedly remember the days when you always had multiple threads in the tactics forum concerning the fighting against Iron Warriors, and the best ways to do it.

Third didn't have target priority :p

Like I said, third really had nothing to recommend it, because at least in 4th, you could try and shot a more distant target on a leadership check, instead of _having_ to shot the closest. Man, that made for some really dumb screening tactics.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

Wait...what? Speaking of assumptions.
I played the crap out of RT and 2nd.

RT was more like RPG rules but I would hardly call it a mess. It merely had different eras (as the rules developed and matured) to it and overall has less material than the clusterfeth that was 6th or the soon to be piece of gak that is 7th.

2nd was hardly herohammer. You had maybe one or two games where people were getting used to the rules and decked out their characters but overwatch and assault cannons quickly ended that once people got wise.

When you roll on a 1D100 chart and have your space marine field police get a shuriken catipult and a motion detector or whatever, yeah, that's a mess.
And for 2nd, characters were always hugely important, at least in the games I played. You didn't even have to deck them out. I had a cannoness with a powersword cut her way through almost an entire squad of chaos marines by herself.

I don't know.. personally I think 7th fixes a lot of what was wrong with 6th(which was pretty great aside from poor flyers rules, melee armies getting the short end of the stick and the awful army/unit combos), so I see no reason to go back to any previous edition everyone only praises because of pure nostalgia as they had some fun with it when they were kids/younger. 3rd and 4th were -far- from being perfect and if you want to bother with all that stuff Polonius listed to make 3rd playable(unless using only the BRB), you'd in fact most likely be more successful adjusting 6th to your group's needs.

"And for 2nd, characters were always hugely important, at least in the games I played. You didn't even have to deck them out. I had a cannoness with a powersword cut her way through almost an entire squad of chaos marines by herself."

I've never really understood this, nor the whole 'herohammer' thing. Characters could be very good compared to regular troops, but isn't that the same as the current game?

Assume a character in 2nd ed. charged an enemy squad. He would be in contact with one, maybe two models, which he would chop up. He then gets a 2" follow up move to engage a third model. In the squad's turn the rest of the unit can simply run away, leaving their friend behind, or even stay where they are and shoot at something. The character can only kill one per close combat phase, and follow up 2". It takes so long to earn his points it isn't worth it!

If you really want to kill the super character you can gang up on him. Each additional model gets +1 attack and +1 WS, so the 6th model is fighting at +5 attacks and +5 WS. The outnumbering player chooses the order the fights are carried out, so make sure your guy with the power fist is fighting last :-)

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

Wait...what? Speaking of assumptions.
I played the crap out of RT and 2nd.

RT was more like RPG rules but I would hardly call it a mess. It merely had different eras (as the rules developed and matured) to it and overall has less material than the clusterfeth that was 6th or the soon to be piece of gak that is 7th.

2nd was hardly herohammer. You had maybe one or two games where people were getting used to the rules and decked out their characters but overwatch and assault cannons quickly ended that once people got wise.

When you roll on a 1D100 chart and have your space marine field police get a shuriken catipult and a motion detector or whatever, yeah, that's a mess.
And for 2nd, characters were always hugely important, at least in the games I played. You didn't even have to deck them out. I had a cannoness with a powersword cut her way through almost an entire squad of chaos marines by herself.

Wow, you're telling me that you DIDN'T like it when your Chaos Legionnaire Captain got a flail arm and a sawn-off-shotgun to complement his Juggernaut?
Rolling on the charts was enjoyable for me and kept things fresh.

And that Canoness with Power Sword would have been mulched by my post-heresy Khorne Terminators, just sayin'

My real issue with RT was the army lists-all units of the same designation (i.e. Tactical) had to be outfitted in the same way.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

Wait...what? Speaking of assumptions.
I played the crap out of RT and 2nd.

RT was more like RPG rules but I would hardly call it a mess. It merely had different eras (as the rules developed and matured) to it and overall has less material than the clusterfeth that was 6th or the soon to be piece of gak that is 7th.

2nd was hardly herohammer. You had maybe one or two games where people were getting used to the rules and decked out their characters but overwatch and assault cannons quickly ended that once people got wise.

When you roll on a 1D100 chart and have your space marine field police get a shuriken catipult and a motion detector or whatever, yeah, that's a mess.
And for 2nd, characters were always hugely important, at least in the games I played. You didn't even have to deck them out. I had a cannoness with a powersword cut her way through almost an entire squad of chaos marines by herself.

Wow, you're telling me that you DIDN'T like it when your Chaos Legionnaire Captain got a flail arm and a sawn-off-shotgun to complement his Juggernaut?
Rolling on the charts was enjoyable for me and kept things fresh.

And that Canoness with Power Sword would have been mulched by my post-heresy Khorne Terminators, just sayin'

My real issue with RT was the army lists-all units of the same designation (i.e. Tactical) had to be outfitted in the same way.

Fully agree, RT and 2nd terminators were terrifying back then and not the joke they are now.

Early 5th ed. was the best time by far.

This thread is just wonderful.

4th ed was the best IMO. Tactics were at the core of every win. Its just great to see so many fans finally fed up with the garbage GW is trying to shove down our throats.

5th ed was when Jervis Jhonson took over 40k as lead rules developer. Since 5th 40k has slowly lost popularity and GW has steadily lost market share. The quality of the rules have gradually declined. Jervis Jhonson is the problem. You read his idiotic stuff about how its more important to "forge a narrative" than follow the rules. Here is a fething clue for you Jervis, if you want to play a casual "narrative" game you can do that with a competent rule set. It seems to me that Jervis is the most incompetent rules dev in the history of the profession. Fire that ass clown already. Mind boggling he has a job as a rules designer when he clearly hates rules.

If I wasn't looking forward to trying out 7th, I'd hardly go back to 3rd. I quit when 3rd was around, and didn't come back til 6th...

As you seem to be part of a friendly group willing to try things and bend the rules (rather than playing mostly pickups with total strangers), your problems with 7th aren't huge.

The main problem with 6th is the meta, the opportunities for heinously overpowered crap that made the game not fun. This arises primarily in games with strangers, either pickup or tourney, because a group can say "No triple Heldrake", for example.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating you play anything you don't enjoy, I'm just suggesting that you can avoid most of the issues with 6th/7th simply by being a group and not randoms. The best solution would probably be to play a couple of trial games of different editions and see how you like it, but I'd recommend making a houseruled 7th simply so current things can be used if people want. This isn't to say that 7th is good - which is why I suggest houserules and the like. Play around with things and see what is fun. People say that, for example, 4th edition was fun and tactical - I know nothing about anything prior to 5th, but it would be really cool if you could come up with a way to find the things that made Xth edition good and then apply it to 7th. Experiment and come up with something cool!

While any decent person would buy 7th edition four times over, there are other ways to get the rules without using money. That would be a most terrible crime, though, and I would never advocate it ever, and this is definitely not sarcasm.

dresnar1 wrote:
This thread is just wonderful.

4th ed was the best IMO. Tactics were at the core of every win.

Ah yes, the siren song of an Iron Warriors player.

I'll be playing 2ed and 3rd....Warmachine and Infinity.

Good shout on Infinity, actually. That's something else I intend to get the group into.

 Bookwrack wrote:

dresnar1 wrote:
This thread is just wonderful.

4th ed was the best IMO. Tactics were at the core of every win.

Ah yes, the siren song of an Iron Warriors player.

Right before getting crushed by invincible grav-falcons.

 Darkseid wrote:
Started in 3rd edition and retrospectively it was probably the worst 40k had to offer. 4th was an improvement but overall not much better.

Honestly I don't see what people expect? Every edition had it's game breaking lists. If you go back to 3rd you will complain about BA rhino rush or the seeding swarm.

Don't let the internet mass hysterics get to you.

Ah, yes. I remember the look on my opponent's face when I rhino rushed his line, dropped the BA, and in one turn, had his army reduced to 18 Orks. A moment of cheesy goodness, to be savored like a fine wine.


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 Bookwrack wrote:

dresnar1 wrote:
This thread is just wonderful.

4th ed was the best IMO. Tactics were at the core of every win.

Ah yes, the siren song of an Iron Warriors player.

You had to love the fact that Pete Haines ran Iron Warriors and came up with the quote to Thousand Sons players that hated the fact their army was yet again hosed, "Any army with two wounds has a lot going for it".


The "best" quote about a direction players weren't happy the game had taken had to be "Fat Bloke", though, to the Squat players that had spent years and more than a few bucks, building their armies through 1st and 2nd, when they were asking why the Squats were discontinued. As quoted in an old White Dwarf, he answered a group at a panel by saying, "Get a life".

 Bookwrack wrote:

dresnar1 wrote:
This thread is just wonderful.

4th ed was the best IMO. Tactics were at the core of every win.

Ah yes, the siren song of an Iron Warriors player.

Dark Eldar, Necrons, and Space Marines OH MY!

I lost like 1 game with my DE maybe?

MadmanMSU wrote:
There's a thing called "one page 40k", where the simplified the rules down to 1 page. I haven't tried it, but you might consider it.

is it "roll a d66 to decide game outcome"?

In all seriousness this intrigues me, do you know where to find it? When i started playing 3rd i was quite young and all i remember is we didnt really get morale, agreed it was boring and slowed things down. So everything was fearless. Considering how many times my chaos space marines have legged it, i kind of miss that.

Are you serious? Third edition? The one made for little kids and not even good at that?

It was so stupid. Roll for winner (who goes first - preferably you use one of the armies that can re-roll winner). Pick cleanse because the other scenarios are unplayable. Sure, use the trial assault rules - congratulations, now you have only 96 squads, and it's a rock paper scissors game instead of coinflip with cheating - lascannon beats rhino, rhino beats alaitoc and alaitoc beats everything that's not rhino.

Like psychic powers? How about S4 blast, that's your psychic power.

Like bikes? How about 40 points a piece?

Like characters? Almost none have more than T4, so you never buy any useless wargear because characters are themselves useless, fisted to death with no hope of achieving anything - unless you're emperor's champion.

Like Monstrous Creatures? Typically 3 wounds, invulnerable 5+ or a 4+ armor save (I have a faint idea that it was 5+ too for tyranids, can't confirm tho). Not that any of them moved or did anything anyway.

Heck, like movement? Bikes go 12, infantry 6, that's it, no running unless you have a special rule that let's you go faster.

I just don't know... Third edition? What good was there about third edition?

Or friggin fourth. I sure hope you like untargetable Daemon princes, chaos liutenants that assault on turn 1, 20 assault cannon armies or other BS like that. BS like those 8 TMC armies.

In short 40k has always had two modes, one where you agree to play reasonable games and one where you don't. Even in third, which is one of the worst tabletop games I have played.

pax_imperialis wrote:

In all seriousness this intrigues me, do you know where to find it? When i started playing 3rd i was quite young and all i remember is we didnt really get morale, agreed it was boring and slowed things down. So everything was fearless. Considering how many times my chaos space marines have legged it, i kind of miss that.

I did this when I first started. I also thought invulnerable saves were taken in addition to armour/cover saves. The reason I thought this was because I could take the Mark of Tzeentch on standard Chaos Marines, giving them a 6++, and this seemed too pointless to not be what I would later discover was Feel No Pain.

nemesis464 wrote:
Early 5th ed. was the best time by far.

Ditto. I joined as 5th came out. Even as a noob I didn't feel stomped.

Yeah, on reflection, 5th was a nice edition.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, on reflection, 5th was a nice edition.

Then along came the Grey Knights.

Or arguably the Space Wolves and Blood Angels or even the Imperial Guard leafblower lists.

Still better than Forge the Narrativehammer.

I'm biased towards 5th, because that was back before my best friend went off on his Mormon quest in Portugal.

If you added hull points rules to 5th edition, you wouldn't be far off from a nicely balanced core rule set.

I'm very eager to turn 2nd edition into a game that plays like the good old days of Necromunda, but with the wider array of 40K armies. Would make for a very fun focused skirmish-level 40K game.

-Small points cap. Maybe 400-500 points.
-Remove Squad Cohesion rules
-Allow purchasing of units at the individual level, just keep squad restrictions about wargear (i.e. must purchase 5 tactical marines to take a single special weapon, 10 for a heavy weapon)
-Keep army composition percentages- (this will help keep characters in check, who can overbalance small points-costs games)
-Maybe some sort of cap on amount/type vehicles used, although the composition percentages might limit that enough, too.

Obviously it would take a lot of cooperation between opponents to keep the game fun, but could make for some very fun games with less than 20 models on a side, maybe more with armies like Orks, of course. Other things would become pretty fun, like zooming single bikes around the battlefield as individuals, where before units of them could become cumbersome to track, due to things like damage effects.

At the very least you might have to shift some things around, like counting Terminators and Devastators (and equivalents for other armies) as "Support" units, because extremely small games could see them becoming overpowered with them just being "Troops" in 2nd edition. But playtesting could see that not matter, as modern 40K makes us forget how in 2nd edition a basic Space marine was 30pts, and a basic Terminator being over 60pts!

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, on reflection, 5th was a nice edition.

No. No it wasn't.

Davor wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, on reflection, 5th was a nice edition.

No. No it wasn't.

Support for argument?

To tell you the truth, every edition had it's bright sides and glaring problems.

I remember pretty well the parking lots of 5 ed. I loved stomping them with my greentide basically cause i found it super-fun to throw a helton of glances - say, 5-8 glances that teared a vehicle part by part. Immobilized, stunned, teared off the weapons, but it remained there. It was fun! But overall i agree that vehicles were too sturdy and they were way harder to deal in mellee with to-hit on 6-s if they moved combat speed. However, mellee mattered back than and there were not that much stupidly fast and protected skimmers. There were draigopallies, horde orkses, genestealers, berserker rushes. Mellee had strong presence and it was a viable part of almost every fight while not being dominant over shooting. No challenges, no focused fire and free wound allocation assured that. And termies meant something. Though, only TH+SS ones cause power weapons were plain ignoring any armor which was an issue too. The thing i miss alot was no pre-measurement.

6 ed brought more cinematic and interesting wound allocation, way more interesting power weapon options and crappy random charges, huge nerfs to cover saves for slow massive armies. It basically killed slow hordes that i loved so much. Way more fragile vehicles and totally ruined dreads which had allready been semi-optimal in 5 ed - not really good, but playable. It totally ruined outflanking mellee-fighters and 90% of mellee fighters on the whole. However, it'd be playable if not rediculous codex-ballance. It's total trash with new tau, daemons and mostly eldar. Stupid countless detachments, not-optimised alliances and basically ignoring foc.

7 ed is basically like 6 with some FAQ-es, much needed FMC nerf, much needed S: D nerf, a tiny bit sturdier vehicles, psy-phase and not properly tested daemonology. It's really no different other than that - it's not a completely different game like it was when 4 switched to 5 or 5 switched to 6. And don't tell me about free foc. It was allready free in 6 basically with all that detachments and allies.

If you're unhappy with the rules ballance - the best thing you could do is get together and create your own combined monstrousity with changes you think are best. Swithcing one imperfect product to another won't help.

 Polonius wrote:
If you added hull points rules to 5th edition, you wouldn't be far off from a nicely balanced core rule set.

Vehicles would be even easier than they were to kill in 6th ed then (quite possibly the easiest to kill of any edition), and even GW realized that they went to far in 6th with that.

The problem with 5E vehicles wasn't the core vehicle rules or even overall vehicle durability. There was tons of vehicle kill in 5th (gobs of deepstriking meltas, SW armies with 25 long range S8/9 BS4 guns, etc) It was stuff like 35pt transports packed with assault troops and a damage table completely focused on gun-tanks (while the 35pt transports didn't care about the vast majority of glancing hits and even on pen's only cared about half the time.) Nobody thought things like Hammerheads, Leman Russ tanks, Fire Prisms, Land Raiders, Predators, Falcons, Hellhounds, Ravagers, etc were an issue in 5th by and large.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
If you added hull points rules to 5th edition, you wouldn't be far off from a nicely balanced core rule set.

Vehicles would be even easier than they were to kill in 6th ed then (quite possibly the easiest to kill of any edition), and even GW realized that they went to far in 6th with that.

The problem with 5E vehicles wasn't the core vehicle rules or even overall vehicle durability. There was tons of vehicle kill in 5th (gobs of deepstriking meltas, SW armies with 25 long range S8/9 BS4 guns, etc) It was stuff like 35pt transports packed with assault troops and a damage table completely focused on gun-tanks (while the 35pt transports didn't care about the vast majority of glancing hits and even on pen's only cared about half the time.) Nobody thought things like Hammerheads, Leman Russ tanks, Fire Prisms, Land Raiders, Predators, Falcons, Hellhounds, Ravagers, etc were an issue in 5th by and large.

After hacking apart a LRBT / Sentinel / HWT gunline with 40 CSM and a daemon prince, I can attest to that. Zerg rushed up the board, roflpwned everything in assault.

Off-topic, but Vaktathi - if I could exalt a signature, I would.

I play 4th edition but the vehicles are easy to destroy, like they were too fragile.

Davor wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, on reflection, 5th was a nice edition.

No. No it wasn't.

Yes. Yes it was.

I loved RT, disliked second, completely skipped third, loved 4th, loved 5th until 2011, disliked 6th and recently found I dislike 7th even more.

I still play 5th with a couple of friends occasionally. No flyers, no fortifications, no look-out-sir madness, no challenges, no allies... so good

Fifth edition gets a bad wrap, but mostly because of the terrible balance between books. Armies like Tau and Eldar were terrible, with outdated books. Armies like Grey Knights and Necrons were amazingly powerful.

With even light comp (and possibly a few house rules regarding KPs), 5th edition is fine.

The main core problems with 5th edition are that vehicles are shockingly durable, terrain rules still rely on true line of sight, and cover saves were far too common and defaulted to a 4+.

If you took 5th and lowered the basic cover save to 5+, and found some way to tame down vehicles (and by that, it's mostly transports), you'd have a really solid rule set.

 Polonius wrote:
Fifth edition gets a bad wrap, but mostly because of the terrible balance between books. Armies like Tau and Eldar were terrible, with outdated books. Armies like Grey Knights and Necrons were amazingly powerful.

This is the reason I said 'until 2011'. Codex GK, Codex Necrons and (for other, completely different reasons) Codex: Sisters of Battle killed most of the fun.

With even light comp (and possibly a few house rules regarding KPs), 5th edition is fine.

The main core problems with 5th edition are that vehicles are shockingly durable, terrain rules still rely on true line of sight, and cover saves were far too common and defaulted to a 4+.

If you took 5th and lowered the basic cover save to 5+, and found some way to tame down vehicles (and by that, it's mostly transports), you'd have a really solid rule set.

Agreed.
Add Hull Points, lower the basic cover save to 5+, fix wound allocation and tweak a handful of units and you get quite a good game.

We've been thinking of letting Tau and Eldar use their new books and supplements, with tweaks to make them useable in 5th.

We also figured that Piranhas cost negative points.

40 points for a Piranha and two Gun Drones, right? Those Gun drones would be 24 points , which means the Piranha hull is 16 points. Two Fire warriors are 18 points (and those two Fire Warriors are currently piloting the Piranha.) Ergo, the Piranha itself is -2 points.

Before people go on that they don't have Pulse Rifles or whatever, I want to point out that this still means its apparently cheaper for the Tau to outfit it's basic warriors with a Piranha than with a Pulse Rifle each.

Yay Tau logistics!

OT though, we'll probably Comp sixth with better Tau and Eldar codexes, allow supplements (comped to make sense), nerf cover a little, possibly tweak vehicles in some way. No one really uses transport spam here, so we're good on that front.

How do we go about fixing wound allocation though? Some of us like 6th's version, I personally think it bones assault armies too much.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
40 points for a Piranha and two Gun Drones, right? Those Gun drones would be 24 points , which means the Piranha hull is 16 points. Two Fire warriors are 18 points (and those two Fire Warriors are currently piloting the Piranha.) Ergo, the Piranha itself is -2 points.

Well that's a load of nonsense. Why do parts of the kit that exist purely for cosmetic purpose and have no in game function get used as part of the point cost evaluation?

 Portugal Jones wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
40 points for a Piranha and two Gun Drones, right? Those Gun drones would be 24 points , which means the Piranha hull is 16 points. Two Fire warriors are 18 points (and those two Fire Warriors are currently piloting the Piranha.) Ergo, the Piranha itself is -2 points.

Well that's a load of nonsense. Why do parts of the kit that exist purely for cosmetic purpose and have no in game function get used as part of the point cost evaluation?

Well, way to miss the joke there.

I keep trying to get people to let me use 14 armor Wave Serpents with 20 guardians inside that can shoot out, including with their plasma cannon. But no one will take me up on it.

Of course, I'm only up for that because no one plays Blood Angels around here anymore. I wouldn't have to see a Rhino move 18", 10 Blood Angels get out and shoot twice, charge with their Str 5/Ini 5, wipe out a unit, then consolidate into another unit.

People who think 3rd and 4th edition were better are just nostalgic.

If sixth isn't your cup of tea, so to speak, I'd suggest that you try to identify the parts of it that you don't like and then play the edition that didn't have those things.

However, as has been pointed out a number of times, if what you don't like is overpowered lists you're not going to find an edition that didn't have *some* way to break the game.

The changes to the rules from sixth to seventh are pretty easy to find in various reviews online; the psychic phase is the big one and the rest are largely cosmetic. It shouldn't be hard to just make a not of how the new rules work and use the sixth ed rulebook with a few footnotes.

Isn't 3rd ed the edition that had the generally considered worst codex's in the history of GW....where the dark elder one was the best of the bunch by virtue of being a brand new army and so actually getting fluff and whatnot.....I remember 3rd ed codex's being like 20 pages or so with non standard marines getting like an 8 page insert telling them what rules to ignore to play their army.

Which happened because people told them they didn't want fluff in their rulebooks....they just wanted to pay for rules.......

I could deal with 5th if it didn't have true line of sight, variable charge distance, 4+ cover, the really stupid wound allocation/save rules, and the impossible to destroy vehicle rules. Not sure if it was 6th or fifth that brought in the ignore cover mechanics but I'd do away with those too. I'd allow infantry troops to score. Flying would need a rework, all the flight rules have been trash.

True line of sight is one of those forge the narrative things. Its much better to have generic terrain rules. More than 3" in cant be seen, 5+ cover for anyone in terrain, behind terrain cant be seen. True line of sight really dumbs down the game making it a you shoot I shoot type of thing instead of strategic movement. 4th ed had the best rules for terrain.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

office_waaagh wrote:
If sixth isn't your cup of tea, so to speak, I'd suggest that you try to identify the parts of it that you don't like and then play the edition that didn't have those things.

However, as has been pointed out a number of times, if what you don't like is overpowered lists you're not going to find an edition that didn't have *some* way to break the game.

The changes to the rules from sixth to seventh are pretty easy to find in various reviews online; the psychic phase is the big one and the rest are largely cosmetic. It shouldn't be hard to just make a not of how the new rules work and use the sixth ed rulebook with a few footnotes.

None of the previous editions comes close to the strategic impossibilities that you can create in 7th. In 4th there was no unwinnable situation. There were things with more power but with good play and a little luck you could come out on top 99% of the time.

7th on the other hand you can lose before a model is put on the table. Good play is meaningless. Even good list building is meaningless if you use the cards. 40k used to be a strategy game. Now its really really expensive chutes and ladders for people dumb enough to give GW their money and pretend its not.

this thread is why GW will never make an edition everyone will like. Some people liked RT, others 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th. I quite liked 3rd and 4th, hated 2nd.

So i guess it's no surprise that the reaction to 7th is fairly negative. C'est la vie.

The game is what you make it, if you have a good group, alter it in the way that makes an enjoyable game. If you rely on pick up games at the local store....I sympathize. GW is not your friend.

I can't see why this thread hasn't got a poll. So that people can vote for their favorite edition.

Interesting that this should be mentioned, as it is similar to what I am currently undertaking for a friend and I - taking 5th edition as the basis (since its core rules seem the most sane) but fixing the more offensive/stupid elements and returning to earlier iterations of the more ridiculous Codices (Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Newcrons).

I don't remember much of 3rd or 4th (I didn't play many games of either), but unkillable Falcons certainly feature in my memories, so I'd advise (with bias of course) taking a similar path to myself.

bullyboy wrote:
this thread is why GW will never make an edition everyone will like. Some people liked RT, others 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th. I quite liked 3rd and 4th, hated 2nd.

So i guess it's no surprise that the reaction to 7th is fairly negative. C'est la vie.

Somebody posted a poll (Sir Arun I believe) asking whether seventh was better than sixth. The poll was roughly 60% in favour of seventh, but the posts were almost universally negative.

The vitriol directed against seventh is misleading: angry people are louder, content people are generally quiet. This holds true of all things online, comments are generally driven by anger. So I don't think that the response to seventh is actually negative overall, it's just that the people that don't like it are writing angry posts online while the people that like it are busy having fun and gaming.

See http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/24/anger-internet-most-powerful-emotion/2863869/ by way of source/example.

Every edition people have bitched like mad about generally everything. For now they whine on and on about the demon factory like they did at the start of 6th about flyers. It'll pass and turn out to be nothing like it always does.

Orktavius wrote:
Every edition people have bitched like mad about generally everything. For now they whine on and on about the demon factory like they did at the start of 6th about flyers. It'll pass and turn out to be nothing like it always does.

These kinds of posts don't really help the conversation. There are people that are legitamately leaving or at least not buying into 7th. I know a few and tomorrow I'm selling my Space Marine army. They have criticisms of 40k that aren't being addressed.

The real question is: will enough people leave to make a difference. That's what I'm curious to see.

2nd edition was awesomely fun when dealing with small armies. 1k to 1.5k was/is pretty fun. Although melee-heavy armies that are also numbers heavy, like Orks and Tyranids, can be a real pain because of the HtH mechanics of 2nd.

4th/5th is good for dealing with large armies that need a more streamlined ruleset than what 2nd edition would give.

 MWHistorian wrote:

Orktavius wrote:
Every edition people have bitched like mad about generally everything. For now they whine on and on about the demon factory like they did at the start of 6th about flyers. It'll pass and turn out to be nothing like it always does.

These kinds of posts don't really help the conversation. There are people that are legitamately leaving or at least not buying into 7th. I know a few and tomorrow I'm selling my Space Marine army. They have criticisms of 40k that aren't being addressed.

The real question is: will enough people leave to make a difference. That's what I'm curious to see.

And yet these same kind of threads pop up every edition as every editon/codex/supplement/white dwarf ruleset/anything GW does causes threads like these. Frankly I don't give a damn, not your game anymore? cool, have fun with another one. Nothing GW puts out will ever satisfy everyone, for every person raging on the interweb about how they will quit the game I'm betting there's 10 who think it's the coolest thing ever and just don't give a crap about posting about it. Satisfied customers say far less than disatisfied ones which means on the internet it always looks like the entire community is raging mad when really it's just a tiny insignificant faction. It happens, can't please everyone and there's no point in trying...so really, you quitting doesn't affect the conversation much either, frankly it's expected everytime GW puts out a rulebook that some will quit and others will come back or new customers will love the new rules.

No one asked you to come into the thread Orktavius. You don't like that people complain? Ok, don't come into the threads titled as such.

It isn't simply an "I'm quitting, Waah!" thread, it's an "I want to play a better version of the game, where do I start?" thread.

But no, you're right Orktavius, it's so much easier to whine in a thread without reading it.

TL;DR: No one asked you to come in, you're hardly contributing anything useful, feel free to leave the thread whenever.

I love it when people come into a thread and whine about people expressing legitimate complaints and calling it whining. Also this new edition has been more polarizing and drastically different. Whether enough people leave is enough, we'll see. As for me, the game is too different than when I started.

 TheKbob wrote:
Play 5th ed and bring in a few changes 6th (and the clarifications from 7th) and you'd be golden.

This. There was nothing wrong with 5th edition that 6th edition fixed aside from the rules for fliers and the fixed rules for cover. The flier rules, on the other hand, totally broke a number of units (night scythes and vendettas). I'd rather be playing 5th than 6th edition even with the flier rules omitted. Heldrakes wouldn't be nearly as bad as they were in 6th (with the torrent flamer) if they were just skimmers. Vendettas weren't really undercosted in 5th, before they had the flier rules.

7th edition is a fething turd. Has nothing to do with a cup of tea - you're smart to leave it behind. Why support a company that treats you like an idiot?