So I have a 4th edition Guard Codex. My friend has the 4th edition Space Marine Codex. I have the 4th edition rule book.

The last time I played 4th edition was way back when we first started wargaming. However when I finally became competent at playing 5th edition comes out and now 5th edition are the rules I remember most.

But since the Gaurd Codex has the doctrines and the Space Marines have something similar we would love to try playing it more often.

What are the pros and cons of 4th edition?

So, the main differences:

Area terrain: 4th edition used a nice, easy abstraction system for terrain, rather than the TLoS garbage we have right now. I don't recall having a single argument about if something was in cover or not.

There were a few other differences with cover as well. For example, units do not give units behind them cover saves in 4th edition. Instead, you have to make a leadership test to see if you can shoot units that are behind ones that are closer. Also, you didn't have super-ruins.

Vehicles: Mostly a different damage chart that was less forgiving. You could cause a vehicle wrecked result with a glancing hit, for example. Also, when you charged a vehicle, your close combat attacks hit the armor face you were attacking, not just counting as if you were hitting rear armor.

They also had slightly different rules for tracing LOS from weapons, and minimum range used to be a real minimum range. Barrage weapons worked slightly differently as well.

Wound allocation: This is big enough to put on its own. 4th ed had, by far, the best wound allocation system. No wound-wrapping.

Skimmers: The old SMF was one of the few genuinely garbage parts of 4th ed, though. Thankfully with guard and SM there was only 1 between the two of them. Enjoy speeders being useful for a change.

Close combat: Also remember that assault was something that was actually doable back in 4th edition. They didn't have running, but they also didn't have a lot of rules that made running necessary to add in the first place.

The biggest thing to note is that it was possible to, at the end of a close combat, consolidate in such a way where you started a new close combat. This meant that you had to actually think for a fraction of a second where you left your units on the board when there was close combat going on.

Not unlike close combat in general. Time to dust off some of those old basic skills like speedbumping.

Anyways, over all 4th edition saw flimsier vehicles and weaker MCs (especially compared to what we have now), and hordes and close combat armies were roughly at their peak. Which was to say, 40k was a game of shooting with some close combat coming in at the end, rather than a game of shooting and then some more shooting.

Pros: Customizable/interesting army books, the little guys mattered more absent the incessant and hilarious escalation of gun sizes in 5e on, the rules were much clearer and less loophole-filled.

Cons: You're stuck with one Codex, no matter how cool or interesting an army concept you've come up with if you can't do it in that one book you're SOL. The power curve may have been a little bit flatter but that doesn't mean some armies (DE, Tau) didn't get completely left out in the cold. Absent hull points one tank can sit and take meltagun hits from now until Doomsday if you keep rolling badly on the damage table. Movement tends to be slower, games tend to be more static.

I actually prefer there being less content in 4th, we simply use our own imaginations and old white dwarfs for that. Like the blood pact rules or the first armoured company rules etc. And more importantly our imagination.

So far sounds pretty good though.

4th edition had its problems.

More than any other edition except maybe 7th, there was a gargantuan gap between Skimmers and Non-skimmers. Skimmers could only ever be glanced as long as they moved at least 6" but also were destroyed if they were immobilized. This had a number of advantages. First, all skimmers were Fast or had cheap wargear to allow them to fire as if Fast (bar the Monolith which had its own impressive capabilities), thus, unless you caught one on the first turn (and were going first), they could only ever be glanced for pretty much the entire game. The major Skimmer races had wargear to mitigate or ignore Stunned results (so they couldn't be prevented from moving) and wargear that mitigated Immobilized results (Tau got to reroll immobilized results on glancing hits, Eldar just became immobilized instead of crashing). So really, you could only ever kill them on 6's on the damage chart (and Eldar Holofields on Falcons forced rolling 2d6-pick-the-lowest so you only had a 1-in-36 chance to kill), while Tracked Tanks and Walkers were killed on glancing 6's and 4+ on Pen's. Also, any unit in a transport that was penetrated automatically had to disembark and take a pinning test, and if having moved over 6" everyone was wounded on a 5+ as well. This made Tracked transports largely completely pointless, while Skimmer transports never suffered this at all.

4E also had some issues with terrain, largely nobody played it correctly, and basically cut ranges down very significantly, as any piece of area terrain 2" thick or more completely blocked LoS, often preventing any LoS to an enemy deployment zone.

Consolidation into combat was another issue, particularly in conjunction with the above two things, in that once something got stuck into close combat (often without ever having been able to be shot at), it could simply move from combat to combat, hiding from any sort of shooting retaliation, and simply rolling up a line. Assault armies dominated this edition and the armies that routinely had the largest margins of victory were usually CC armies or armies with a strong CC component (e.g. Eldar Flying Circus with harlies)

Vehicles also couldn't get cover saves, they could only downgrade pen's to glances on a 4+ if partially obscured.

Additionally, there was a huge gap in codex effectiveness. Some armies were absolutely worthless, much moreso than anything in the current game. Daemonhunters and Imperial Guard in 4E spring to mind as some of the least capable armies GW has ever had.

Rapid Fire weapons were much less effective, if you moved at all you couldn't shoot over 12" away.

Target Priority was another thing, to shoot at something other than the closest unit, you had to take an Ld test, if you failed, you had to shoot at the closest unit. This was a major issue.



On the pro side however, lots of armies had great customization options, though that really started at the end of 3E.

Wound allocation was simple, just roll your saves and remove as many models as failed their save, whoever you wanted. Much easier and less finicky than it is currently.

Old school Victory points were still a thing, where the actual value of something killed mattered. If you killed a Land Raider, you got 250 VP's, and if you killed a Rhino you got 50 VP's (they were 50pts back then), whereas now they're *both* 1 VP, which is asinine. The book also defined margins of victory.

Cover in general wasn't quite as generous as it is now, particularly cover bonuses, the only bad part was mentioned above (where vehicles could not get cover) but you didn't have large numbers of units running around with 3+ and 2+ cover saves, in the open, with frequency.

Invul saves also weren't as crazy, a 2++ was only available to DE and the first time it failed you lost it. 3++ invuls were only available to Necron Wraiths and Sisters of Battle getting off a specific Act of Faith, 4+ was the best possible otherwise as far as I remember.

The art, design, and feel of everything was much more immersive, to me at least, than mmost of the newer stuff, lots of custom terrain in pics, great artwork, a much "darker" feel in general to most of the stuff. 3E and 4E are my favorite GW time periods in terms of look & feel.

Vaktathi wrote: in that once something got stuck into close combat (often without ever having been able to be shot at), it could simply move from combat to combat, hiding from any sort of shooting retaliation, and simply rolling up a line.

Only if you let it. If you stayed outside of D6", it didn't work.

Consolidating into close combat only looks scary if you don't want there to be any player skill involved in defending against close combat. Like now.

Vaktathi wrote:Vehicles also couldn't get cover saves, they could only downgrade pen's to glances on a 4+ if partially obscured.

Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that.

Instead of on a 3+ the tank ignores the damage behind an aegis, it was on a 4+ the tank reduced their chances of being destroyed outright. Basically the opposite of MCs these days who can have their big toe in cover and effectively claim an invul save.

I hazily recall that this sort of thing is what got me to be a foot guard player in 5th ed. Tanks used to be way easier to kill. Well, ones that weren't holofield falcons.

Vaktathi wrote:Old school Victory points were still a thing, where the actual value of something killed mattered. If you killed a Land Raider, you got 250 VP's, and if you killed a Rhino you got 50 VP's (they were 50pts back then), whereas now they're *both* 1 VP, which is asinine. The book also defined margins of victory.

To be fair, though, this was basically 4th edition's only mission, apart from table quarters, which was a very silly way to play. When every game devolved to literally nothing more than who could kill the most stuff fastest, without even the pretense of things like serious board control, it did sort of limit the game.

VPs were nice, but missions, overall, have only been improving since 4th ed.

Swastakowey wrote:I actually prefer there being less content in 4th, we simply use our own imaginations and old white dwarfs for that. Like the blood pact rules or the first armoured company rules etc. And more importantly our imagination.

Thinking about it some more, I'd say this is the biggest overarching difference. A few exceptions like SMF aside, the 4th edition core rules were more solid, and 5th came by and added a lot of good stuff, but also broke some of those core rules. In a way, 4th were the better rules, and 5th were the more comprehensive rules.

Come to think of it, a lot of games have been this way. Light and simple to big, but tight, to huge and soft with lots of options, to bloated with lots of tangents. D&D did this from 1 to 4 and Civilization (the computer game) did this from 2 to 5. When you play the older games, you miss the content, and when you play newer games, you miss the pace and raw interactivity with the rules.

 Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote: in that once something got stuck into close combat (often without ever having been able to be shot at), it could simply move from combat to combat, hiding from any sort of shooting retaliation, and simply rolling up a line.

Only if you let it. If you stayed outside of D6", it didn't work.

Consolidating into close combat only looks scary if you don't want there to be any player skill involved in defending against close combat. Like now.

Often there wasn't much you could do about it, there wasn't room to move, terrain rolls, etc. For footguard especially this was awful given crowded deployment zones.. It was also especially difficult if two or three enemy units had made it into close combat, often coming out of a skimmer transport or having advanced behind LoS 2"+ thick area terrain without any chance of being shot at, and there wasn't anywhere to avoid it.

CC was extremely powerful in 4E, more than it really should have been.

As for 7E, I think I've had only one game where no CC of any kind occurred, and in most games something has gotten stuck in by turn 2, almost always by turn 3 there's stuff CC stuff going on. In 4E it was often a very quiet turn 1 and 2 as what shots could be made were made and then everything got stuck in turns 3 and 4 and swept up the line through turn 6. Allow units to assault out of stationary transports again and it'd be golden.

Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that.

Instead of on a 3+ the tank ignores the damage behind an aegis, it was on a 4+ the tank reduced their chances of being destroyed outright. Basically the opposite of MCs these days who can have their big toe in cover and effectively claim an invul save.

I hazily recall that this sort of thing is what got me to be a foot guard player in 5th ed. Tanks used to be way easier to kill. Well, ones that weren't holofield falcons.

Mech IG didn't work...at all. I played it in 4E, and I can't think of another army in any other edition of 40k that played as badly as it did. Even footdar in 5E were better.


IG in general were pretty hilariously bad in 4E

I just looked over the doctrines for the Vostroyans the other day, their basic platoon Infantry Squads coming out to be 105pts before any heavy/special weapons, veteran sergeant upgrade, etc Even a relatively common AC/GL squad as equipped currently with a veteran sergeant base were 97pts

To be fair, though, this was basically 4th edition's only mission, apart from table quarters, which was a very silly way to play. When every game devolved to literally nothing more than who could kill the most stuff fastest, without even the pretense of things like serious board control, it did sort of limit the game.

VPs were nice, but missions, overall, have only been improving since 4th ed.

In some ways I'd agree. I much prefer the objective based scenarios of 5E+ to the 4E missions, I just vastly prefer 4E VP's to the 5E KP holdover we have now when they're used.


Also, I forgot about 4E deployment, where you alternated placing models from different FoC slots and then rolled for first turn after deployment. That is very definitely not missed.

 Ailaros wrote:
Area terrain: 4th edition used a nice, easy abstraction system for terrain, rather than the TLoS garbage we have right now. I don't recall having a single argument about if something was in cover or not.

4th used true line of sight. It sounds like you (and a lot of other players did as well) used the rules for determining line of sight in regards to area terrain for all terrain instead. That was one that went around quite a few times in YMDC.

Cover was something almost universally mishandled by players (myself included). I don't know anybody that actually ran anything as "True" line of sight in 4E, in any city or event I played in up and down the west coast.

Ghaz wrote:4th used true line of sight. It sounds like you (and a lot of other players did as well) used the rules for determining line of sight in regards to area terrain for all terrain instead. That was one that went around quite a few times in YMDC.

Anything on a base used the area terrain rules. Which was pretty much everything.

Not the tiny L-shaped ruins GW put out at the time (though even then, I usually saw people putting them on bases with some flocking), but hills, craters, forests (remember when you could use forests?) and ruined buildings made by players all counted.

I actually liked the system where cover could behave slightly differently. A player could choose if they wanted to keep their units out of LOS and not be able to shoot, or have them in LOS with a cover save. When where you stood in terrain mattered, it made the movement phase and terrain more interesting than "Do you want a free invul save with that?"

The terrain system was so good that, with the exception of flamers, the game wasn't forced to have all this mass ignores-cover crap they have these days.

Vaktathi wrote:Often there wasn't much you could do about it, there wasn't room to move, terrain rolls, etc. For footguard especially this was awful given crowded deployment zones.. It was also especially difficult if two or three enemy units had made it into close combat, often coming out of a skimmer transport or having advanced behind LoS 2"+ thick area terrain without any chance of being shot at, and there wasn't anywhere to avoid it.

Yes, if your entire opponent's army charged you at once, you were sort of screwed. Of course, you would have had to do something pretty wrong for your opponent to be able to pull that off. If you didn't focus down units or use speedbumps or, say, temporarily retreat in the face of impossible odds, then honestly you deserved to get steamrolled in my opinion.

People these days treat close combat as this mysterious force that may or may not happen and there's nothing you can do about it if it does. People definitely didn't think about it that way in 4th ed, back when there was more player skill involved in the process.

If we were talking about 3rd ed rhino rushing where you could practically guarantee your whole army got into close combat turn 2, it would be a different story, but given how crappy mech was in 4th (and even then you couldn't assault out of closed-topped transports), that was much less of an issue. Plus, you couldn't run in 4th ed, so you had half the game to manage how the close combat part of the game would resolve.

Vaktathi wrote:

VPs were nice, but missions, overall, have only been improving since 4th ed.

In some ways I'd agree. I much prefer the objective based scenarios of 5E+ to the 4E missions, I just vastly prefer 4E VP's to the 5E KP holdover we have now when they're used.

Well, KP made sense in 5th ed because of the other 2 missions. The other missions HIGHLY rewarded MSU spam. They needed to have something to balance it out, which KP certainly attempted.

Vaktathi wrote:Also, I forgot about 4E deployment, where you alternated placing models from different FoC slots and then rolled for first turn after deployment. That is very definitely not missed.

Ugh.

I do get a tiny bit nostalgic, though, for the old way of terrain placement. It was nice to have it set up where you could make an invincible fortress of doom, but there was a 50% chance your opponent would get to set up in it. Kept things more honest than on the one hand 6th ed's hide the aegis or 7th ed's ability to buy an invincible fortress of doom.

Vaktathi wrote:Mech IG didn't work...at all. I played it in 4E, and I can't think of another army in any other edition of 40k that played as badly as it did. Even footdar in 5E were better.

Well, and you couldn't even really run mech guard if you wanted to. One of the many things I don't miss about the guard's 4th ed codex was the requirement to take a foot platoon for every ONE squad in a chimera.

I do miss 4th ed's serious danger to passengers thing, though. In 4th ed, your transport explodes, and you're toast. The few survivors are pinned and then have to pick themselves out of the ruins of their vehicle. Starting in 5th ed your transport gets destroyed, and so what? They just pop out, brush themselves off and keep going like nothing happened. That's always rankled me, even in 5th ed. It was the reason 5th ed wound up being a mech edition, in addition to the codex changes. I don't recall ever seeing a mechanized gunline before the leafblower.

Bring back real risks instead of braindead "choices", and it would clear up a lot, even today. If it was a serious risk bringing avengers in a wave serpent, where you had to actually think about if you wanted them on foot or not, or if they should disembark instead of hiding in the can the whole game, you would dismiss a great deal in its cheesiness instantaneously.

 Ailaros wrote:

Ghaz wrote:4th used true line of sight. It sounds like you (and a lot of other players did as well) used the rules for determining line of sight in regards to area terrain for all terrain instead. That was one that went around quite a few times in YMDC.

Anything on a base used the area terrain rules. Which was pretty much everything.

Trust me, it came up enough in YMDC during 4th edition. Just like today you still had to discuss with your opponent what terrain counted as what.

 Ailaros wrote:

Well, KP made sense in 5th ed because of the other 2 missions. The other missions HIGHLY rewarded MSU spam. They needed to have something to balance it out, which KP certainly attempted.

Not to get too far into it, but there's no indication, anywhere, that this was the intention of KP's, it's just the reason some people came up with when they wanted to assume GW was actually engaging in legitimate game design and attempting some sort of mission meta balance (in a manner that they've never attempted before or since) instead of simply dumbing down basic arithmetic to make victory calculation not require a calculator.

It's also a really bad way to go about trying to fix that as you can get games where the side that inflicted less realistic damage on its opponent wins. Just had to deal with a loss like that a couple weeks ago, opponent had six models left with a total value of ~200-250pts with a one wound librarian and a 4 man tac squad left and drop pod, I had 2 DKoK Grenadier units at nearly full strength, two heavy mortars squads fully functioning, and a death rider unit down only one model and ~566pts of models left, both of us had Warlord and Linebreaker, I had first blood, and still lost

I do get a tiny bit nostalgic, though, for the old way of terrain placement. It was nice to have it set up where you could make an invincible fortress of doom, but there was a 50% chance your opponent would get to set up in it. Kept things more honest than on the one hand 6th ed's hide the aegis or 7th ed's ability to buy an invincible fortress of doom.

Did they have terrain setup rules in 4E? IIRC they really didn't say much other than "well, if someone sets up the table, there's a convention that the other player gets to choose their deployment zone, if a 3rd party did it, roll off".

Well, and you couldn't even really run mech guard if you wanted to. One of the many things I don't miss about the guard's 4th ed codex was the requirement to take a foot platoon for every ONE squad in a chimera.

You could take the "mechanized' doctrine or run "Grenadiers" and have them be mechanized (that's what I tried). Not that any of them really worked well at all, especially not with Chimeras being 90pts after guns and smoke launchers

It's still amusing that HWS's and SWS's can't take Chimeras even now.

I do miss 4th ed's serious danger to passengers thing, though. In 4th ed, your transport explodes, and you're toast. The few survivors are pinned and then have to pick themselves out of the ruins of their vehicle. Starting in 5th ed your transport gets destroyed, and so what? They just pop out, brush themselves off and keep going like nothing happened. That's always rankled me, even in 5th ed. It was the reason 5th ed wound up being a mech edition, in addition to the codex changes. I don't recall ever seeing a mechanized gunline before the leafblower.

And there's a reason nobody used non-Skimmer transports in 4E as a result. They were non-functional as transports, and simply acted as a damage enhancer for your opponent.

It also hasn't helped that, at least for IG, most of the functional infantry units only function effectively with a transport.

But currently, you have to take a pinning test any time the transport is destroyed,, embarked units have to take an Ld test for every pen or can only fire snapshots, and explosions still force wounds on a 4+ for every passenger. That's pretty solid, and not really that far from 5E.

Well, you wouldn't have to do it 4th ed's way. Just something to make it not so braindead that any unit who can take a transport should, and they should spend as much time as possible in it. At least in 6th+ edition they have to get out to score.

Plus, I feel like transports are still priced like 4th ed (points deflation excluded). They're given the price of a vehicle with guns, and then the transport part is just tacked on for free. That might have worked in a world where you sometimes wanted to be mounted up and sometimes didn't, or where there were risks involved, but nowadays transport really just means free 1++ for everything inside and few consequences if the vehicle is killed.

A dakkapred being the same cost as a chimera (with appended autocannon price) is insane. Making a wave serpent as cheap as a falcon or fire prism is even moreso. Tanks should have to pay for all of their armor, mobility and guns, and then have to pay to also be a transport. If not in points, then in some other way, such as risk.

Something to cut its cheese factor a bit, especially given how bad hordes are these days.

And yeah, in 4th ed, you rolled to see who got first turn, but you also rolled to see who got to choose which side of the table to deploy on, rather than rolling both of them into the same die roll and then having to stupidly add seizing the initiative as an ineffective afterthought.

Oh, also...

AnomanderRake wrote:The power curve may have been a little bit flatter but that doesn't mean some armies (DE, Tau) didn't get completely left out in the cold.

Anyone who doesn't remember relentless TL S10 Ap1, or firewarriors exploding AV10/11, or MSM in VP games needs a refresher course in just how "bad" tau were in 4th ed.

Just because it was actually possible to open up the rules for the assault phase when playing against them didn't make them bad.

Also, DE were, if anything stronger in 4th ed than now. Yeah, raider-based armies were a fair bit worse, but foot DE used to be brutal. Playing "where's my mandrakes?" as beasts and the 2++ machine of doom ate your face off kind of hurt.

 Ailaros wrote:
Also, DE were, if anything stronger in 4th ed than now. Yeah, raider-based armies were a fair bit worse, but foot DE used to be brutal.

Wyches rolling up whole flanks of a slower army with assault and consolidating into the next assault... ouch.

Worst part of fourth edition was the chaos codex. Specifically iron warriors and slaanesh. It was broken beyond all reasoning (it would make fifth ed grey knights blush with shame).

Transports were utter garbage, turning the third ed 'rhino rush' armies on their heads, and turning most armies without skimmers into fairly static sit and shoot affairs. Non skimmer vehicles were pillboxes for the most part.

Staying clear of that, it was fairly ok.

Space marines were the 6man min/max las/plas and assault cannon on everything spam army.

And guard? Ooft, their broken build of choice was drop troops. Iron discipline, close order drill, drop troops, special weapons squads. You could have an army with fifty special weapons (plasmas, meltas, flowers) deep striking on turn two that could not be shot at on the way down. I saw it one-turn no end of armies.

I didn't mind 4th ed at all. Basically 3rd ed with a few more rules. I quite liked Pete Haines' vehicle rules with their access points and fire points. You had to shoot the nearest target or take a Ld test to shoot something else, which harked back to 2nd ed but was easier.
Biggest pro for any old edition: Cheap as chips
Against: Finding opponents!

IMO 4th was horrible. Between skimmers and combat consolidation, not a lot of fun.

 Byte wrote:
IMO 4th was horrible. Between skimmers and combat consolidation, not a lot of fun.

Only person in the thread to have said that.

XD

4th ed had great rules, but I loved combat consolidation it made assualt combat actually viable for an army.

 Asherian Command wrote:
I loved combat consolidation it made assualt combat actually viable for an army.

Congratulations on playing an assault army then. It was utter BS for anyone else, even more so if the terrain and army numbers made it hard to be out of consolidate range. I know it's not nice to put assault units on the table only to see them get shot before they do anything, but you had the same back then - only it was guys that sucked at assault getting murdered before they could do anything. And all the while the assault unit was invulnerable to shooting after making it's first charge.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
I loved combat consolidation it made assualt combat actually viable for an army.

Congratulations on playing an assault army then. It was utter BS for anyone else, even more so if the terrain and army numbers made it hard to be out of consolidate range. I know it's not nice to put assault units on the table only to see them get shot before they do anything, but you had the same back then - only it was guys that sucked at assault getting murdered before they could do anything. And all the while the assault unit was invulnerable to shooting after making it's first charge.

It took 2 turns to get to the enemies board safely. That is utter BS it is your own fault for not positioning your units in such a way that allows them to be able to be useful.

I will only play 40K with my friends if we are using 4th edition. Between material for third and fourth editions, I have basically everything I would ever need for 40K, and anything I do not have is idiotically cheap on the internet. For me, I have basically frozen 40K at the time just after the 4th edition rules dropped, but I do have to say that I throw in the odd codex that is out of edition if it is better, like using the 2010 codex for Eldar makes them more fun to play than the earlier codex editions, (or the current one).

I just loved all the material for 40K from that period- so much so that I prefer to think of it as the best time there was to play 40K. Look what we had:

-Vehicle Design Rules: I have actually bought vehicles from today, and easily made 4e-compatible rules. Now my Oldcrons can have Newcron vehicles.

-White Dwarf and Chapter Approved Compilations: Remember Kroot Mercs? Or Deathwatch Kill-Teams? Feral Orks?

-Awesome summer campaign armies: I own 2500pts of Space Wolves 13th Company, complete with a big squad of awesome metal Wulfen. Or how about Lost and the Damned, or Speed Freeks, or Ulthwe strike forces? Black Templars that only needed a couple of pages added to Codex Space marines to be unique and cool?

Things like Cityfight could spice up a game night.

Remember when Sisters of Battle had a physical codex? Witch Hunters and Daemon Hunters were the cool way they used to do codexes, where you got several force options for the price of one.

The largest universal problem with 4th edition was skimmers, but at least for me that is a non-issue. My Eldar have two grav-tanks, that's all. All the terrain and line of sight rules were much better than in 7th edition.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I will only play 40K with my friends if we are using 4th edition. Between material for third and fourth editions, I have basically everything I would ever need for 40K, and anything I do not have is idiotically cheap on the internet. For me, I have basically frozen 40K at the time just after the 4th edition rules dropped, but I do have to say that using the 2010 codex for Eldar makes them more fun than the earlier codex editions, or even the current one.

I just loved all the material for 40K from that period- so much so that I prefer to think of it as the best time there was to play 40K. Look what we had:

-Vehicle Design Rules: I have actually bought vehicles from today, and easily made 4e-compatible rules. Now my Oldcrons can have Newcron vehicles.

-White Dwarf and Chapter Approved Compilations: Remember Kroot Mercs? Or Deathwatch Kill-Teams? Feral Orks?

-Awesome summer campaign armies: I own 2500pts of Space Wolves 13th Company, complete with a big squad of awesome metal Wulfen. Or how about Lost and the Damned, or Speed Freeks, or Ulthwe strike forces? Black Templars that only needed a couple of pages added to Codex Space marines to be unique and cool?

Things like Cityfight could spice up a game night.

Remember when Sisters of Battle had a physical codex? Witch Hunters and Daemon Hunters were the cool way they used to do codexes, where you got several force options for the price of one.

The largest universal problem with 4th edition was skimmers, but at least for me that is a non-issue. My Eldar have two grav-tanks, that's all. All the terrain and line of sight rules were much better than in 7th edition.

IN addition you could use on special nights rules from 7th or missions from 5th.

True. I also love how the Universal Special Rules in 4th edition consisted of maybe 20-odd actual rules entries over 5 pages, not some huge bloated thing. And they were mostly just a collated version of rules that had been in individual codexes since 3rd edition, like Fleet of Foot/Hoof.


Especially if money is an issue and you are looking to get some close friends into 40K that are not involved with it yet, 4th edition era is by far the cheapest way to play 40K.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
, but I do have to say that I throw in the odd codex that is out of edition if it is better, like using the 2010 codex for Eldar makes them more fun to play than the earlier codex editions, (or the current one).

What 2010 codex? Fourth edition Eldar came out in 2006. The sixth edition book came out 2013. There was not a codex in between.

I really enjoyed 4th. One of the big pluses for me was I liked that you had to roll to hit with things like plasma cannons and frag missiles. I didn't really like how the scattered in 5th. Wound allocation was easier in 4th, it only makes sense that if the meltagun guy dies someone else in the squad picks it up.

I never really had a problem using mech guard in 4th, back then most people didn't have the anti tank fire power to deal with 12 chimeras before the rest of the army got them. At least in my area we never found skimmers that difficult. Sooner or later they would get immobilized and crash. In the case of the Tau/Eldar ones that landed you just move around them and shoot them in the rear armour. Now I am sure metas were different in other areas. We had a a lot of marine players running 3 squads of 2 land speaders each with assault cannon, but they went down eventually.

A friend of mine wants to start playing 4th again. We didn't like 5th but rolled with it, 6th nuked 40K in my area and we have no interest in 7th. So if you are going to be out of touch go with what you like. We my make a house rule and allow the 5th Blood Angels book, my friend likes it more than the mini dex. I also prefer the 5th DE book, but the 3rd ed book played well in 4th, just not as organized.

 Arschbombe wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
, but I do have to say that I throw in the odd codex that is out of edition if it is better, like using the 2010 codex for Eldar makes them more fun to play than the earlier codex editions, (or the current one).

What 2010 codex? Fourth edition Eldar came out in 2006. The sixth edition book came out 2013. There was not a codex in between.

Urk. I meant the 2006 Codex. Mine says it is the 2010 print edition, I was looking at the wrong date, sorry. Half the time I have to look at the date to remember which edition each codex was. I have been playing since 2nd edition, I have seen a LOT of different codex covers, lol.

Man, this is really making me want to go back and play some 4th. I might have to go find the rule book on the Internet, I still have the old codexes.

Was 4th still the time of the original DE codex?

Hmmmm....I believe so? My second edition version (the one with the White Dwarf material added in) has the same cover style as the other 4e stuff. I think that was the time period where they got forgotten for a huge time before the revamp of their entire army.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Hmmmm....I believe so? My second edition version (the one with the White Dwarf material added in) has the same cover style as the other 4e stuff. I think that was the time period where they got forgotten for a huge time before the revamp of their entire army.

Correct or It was 3rd ed. I Don't remember, I was quite young when 3rd came out.

Its been a while XD. But I still remember fondly how awesome 4th ed was.

I remember during the 4th ed era when we had many different things such as the store participation where WAGH fest was a thing. People allowed Movie Marines!

People also let zombies be a thing. And also had a WAGH christmas,

It also was when 4th allowed for storyline progression and added new characters.

5th Edition Allowed us to have new special characters for space marines and eldar etc.

Useful list of codex books here
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Codices_%28List%29#.U-wzavldXTc
The 3rd ed books from Witch Hunters on, including the revised ones, were written for 4th because they included fire and access points (which were trial rules in WD) in the vehicle descriptions. So you can use those too.
We've been playing a bit of 3rd ed at our club, as it's even simpler than 4th.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Byte wrote:
IMO 4th was horrible. Between skimmers and combat consolidation, not a lot of fun.

Only person in the thread to have said that.

XD

4th ed had great rules, but I loved combat consolidation it made assualt combat actually viable for an army.

Probably didnt help I played GKs in a toxic WAAC tournament meta enviroment.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Byte wrote:
IMO 4th was horrible. Between skimmers and combat consolidation, not a lot of fun.

Only person in the thread to have said that.

I said it in the 5th post in the thread

Having played multiple armies in 4E, and having experienced both sides of the equation, combat consolidation was not needed for a viable army, but was rather a supremely abuseable mechanic.

AegisGrimm wrote:True. I also love how the Universal Special Rules in 4th edition consisted of maybe 20-odd actual rules entries over 5 pages, not some huge bloated thing. And they were mostly just a collated version of rules that had been in individual codexes since 3rd edition, like Fleet of Foot/Hoof.

Ugh, I do not miss this at ALL.

If you don't do universal special rules, you have to do weird, parochial special rules, like they did in 4th edition. Every codex had its own weird stuff that only you knew how it worked, and you had the same special rules across a few codices that worked differently because they were phrased differently depending on what book you were looking at at the time.

Playing guard in 4th ed invariably required me to spend the first part of the game explaining how my basilisks and hellhounds worked. Now I say "they're barrage weapons" and "it's a torrent flamer" and people just know what I mean.

This was especially a pain in the butt for some of the more "creative" rules. I don't think I ever met two necron players who played the old WBB the same way. People were hoping it would get swapped out for FNP for a reason...

To be fair, the Hellhound was the only "torrent" unit in the game at that point. That was originally it's unique "schtick". That said, it having to hit on a 4+, or roll every model individually on a 4+, was incredibly lame

Yeah.

Well, there were other things, too. Doctrines needed to be explained every time, too. You couldn't just say "it gives them stubborn", you had to explain how their Ld worked, for example. And guard had mortar HWSs before there were standardized rules for multiple barrages.

A feel like you always had to be explaining stuff, especially in pick-up play. It was more than a bit cumbersome.

I do have to admit that when I say I am playing 4e games, it's more like I'm using 4e rules and the majority of forces are using their 3e codex books like it's the days right after the 4e release. So the majority of special rules that the different forces used to make you reference their individual codex for are just consolidated in the USR section of the 4e rulebook, like True Grit, Fleet of Foot/hoof, etc.

I barely get any games of 40k played, so the simpler the better, as I am more into playing a game that lets me experience the universe, rather than being super-competitive. After codexes started coming out for 4e, everything just got more and more bloated with every edition. Back in 3/4, i felt more like I could keep on top of what everything in each army could do, even if I did not play them.

Hell, I think I could teach 2nd edition to my wife easier than anything after 4th. Plus I like books, not e-files, for my supplemental material.

Amazing how the slower static releases and long periods between codex updates have become the good ol days.

 Byte wrote:
Amazing how the slower static releases and long periods between codex updates have become the good ol days.

Well its because they actually had good game testers and actually tried to make it playable.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Byte wrote:
Amazing how the slower static releases and long periods between codex updates have become the good ol days.

Well its because they actually had good game testers and actually tried to make it playable.

Ive been playing this game since 2nd edition and have never heard such things ever said.

 Byte wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Byte wrote:
Amazing how the slower static releases and long periods between codex updates have become the good ol days.

Well its because they actually had good game testers and actually tried to make it playable.

Ive been playing this game since 2nd edition and have never heard such things ever said.

So are you telling me that 7th edition is more playable and more fun and more comprehensive than 4th edition and 5th edition?

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Byte wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Byte wrote:
Amazing how the slower static releases and long periods between codex updates have become the good ol days.

Well its because they actually had good game testers and actually tried to make it playable.

Ive been playing this game since 2nd edition and have never heard such things ever said.

So are you telling me that 7th edition is more playable and more fun and more comprehensive than 4th edition and 5th edition?

Yes. 5th edition leaf blower vendetta scout move ridiculousness, GK auto win power weapon and wound shanangins... com'n man... 4th edition WD BAs, Eldar pop up attack gravtank stupidity. Assault attacks hit skimmers on 6s... really!? Pop up attacks...! Give me a break man. Combat consolidation anarchy... 4th and 5th made complete armies unplayable.

I played a lot of tournaments a lot from 3rd-4th and the only book that was never represented around our local store was codex Catachans. During 4th ed tournaments we usually had a wide variety to armies represented. So to say that a large amount of armies were unplayable by the edition will vary from location to location.

I can't think of any armies that were straight unplayable. Just because there were a few cheesy lists didn't mean that nothing but cheesy lists could be fielded.

And, as mentioned, every edition had cheese. I think he's just using a really weird definition of "unplayable". Something more akin to "armies I tried once and lost with" than "armies that couldn't be played".

I think that the last time I really felt like I was having fun was back in fourth edition. I disliked all the actual in game choices that 5th took out of the game and everything ended in sixth where the game quickly became pay to win and 40K lost its identity.

Which in-game choices did 5th remove? Other than the area terrain thing?

And there was a great deal of play-to-win in 4th edition. Meanwhile, that attitude has been seriously challenged since 6th and especially 7th dropped. It was only play-to-win types that nerdragequit when seventh came by.

Pay to win. As in incomplete codex's with additional fifty dollar supplements or data sheet.

Rules that were dropped that allowed tactical flexibility. The two biggest that come to mind is the ability to turn off special melee weapons and choosing wither or not to make a sweeping advanced. You could also say that giving every one run took away a tactical advantage to those models that had fleet.

Oh, sorry. To be fair, pay to win only exists at the absolute peak of people needing the easiest wins. For a vast majority of 40k players, it isn't more than usual. Plus, buying a new dataslate and a new model is a lot cheaper than buying an entire new army like codex-hoppers used to have to do.

And you're not forced to use special weapons in close combat if you have them. Now as then, if you have a powerfist and a chainsword, you can always choose to use the chainsword. You always have the choice to just use your attacks profile. And I don't recall there ever being a reason why one wouldn't sweeping advance. You had the choice to consolidate, or possibly wipe out your opponent's unit, and then consolidate. Fleet is messed up now, but it wasn't in 5th edition.

I would add something else, though, that was SUPER annoying in 4th edition that they fixed in 5th. In 4th ed, independent characters with powerfists or slower initiative were basically guaranteed not to get a chance to swing at all thanks to models not being engaged until their initiative step rolled around. On many an occasion I had my eviscerator priest killed out of the ability to do anything before his initiative step arrived. That was SMF levels of BS.

Then melee has changed because it used to be in fifth and sixth if you had a special weapon you had to use it. Also being forced to sweeping advance caused me to loose my first ever game of fifth Ed. Both of us were Marines in hth over an objective. He lost and failed his LD check. He was running. If I could have just let him run he would have most likely run too far to contest. But no I was forced to sweep, I caught him and we stayed locked in combat. In order to win the game I actually had to lose the roll off. It left a bad taste in my mouth from the get go.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
your priest is an example of how model placement mattered in fourth. It was a skill to set up your charges so that the guys you want to fight fought and the guys you didn't want to fight against couldnt. It was something I was good at and IMO made hth a satisfying part of the game when it worked as planned.

Wasn't 4th the age of plasma gets hot on a 1 or 2 when rapid firing? Plasma was painful, but still worth it.

 Jayden63 wrote:
Then melee has changed because it used to be in fifth and sixth if you had a special weapon you had to use it. Also being forced to sweeping advance caused me to loose my first ever game of fifth Ed. Both of us were Marines in hth over an objective. He lost and failed his LD check. He was running. If I could have just let him run he would have most likely run too far to contest. But no I was forced to sweep, I caught him and we stayed locked in combat. In order to win the game I actually had to lose the roll off. It left a bad taste in my mouth from the get go.

You didn't need to use the powerfist in 6th either.

And that's a pretty rare situation you're describing. I would note, though, that it's not the only compulsory thing about close combat. You can't choose not to pile in if it would help you, or choose for models not to attack at all in close combat.

 Jayden63 wrote:
your priest is an example of how model placement mattered in fourth.

Except it wasn't. I could place my priest correctly, and the rest of the squad could kill one or two models, and guess which ones my opponent would choose to remove? Great, now my priest doesn't get to attack.

Pile-in moves and determining who could fight at the beginning were two necessary advancements in 6th and 5th, respectively.

I started playing in 3rd and stopped in 4th during my mid teens. I fondly remember the shift to 4th and how much more *fun* all the miniatures, codices, rules, and gameplay became.

I sorely miss the "make your chapter" part of the SM codex, or the equivalent the guard had.

Cons:

- too harsh on Transport Vehicles and passengers
- easy mode for Skimmers
- atrocious rules wording/editing
- incompetent gunline players always complaining because movement mattered

Pros:

+ everything else

Once the 4th ed Chaos Marines came out there was a good balance between the army books, there were some strong builds nothing was really over the top. Eldar skimmers were good but they were super expensive so it wasn't like the table was covered with them. Drop podding SM could be vicious OR a complete disaster. Tau could pump out shots, but were very flimsy in combat. Green tide was great in 4th. It was a good edition if you just wanted to get together w/friends and have a few hours of fun. Pick up games were easy, at least in my area, because everyone bought every book and it was easy to skim them over to get the gist. It was a good stream lined system.

I can see the appeal of the "forging a narrative" style of 6th & 7th it seems like it would be fun every once in a while. However if you are playing regularly and trying to do a campaign or tournament it was a lot easier to keep track of the 90 pages of rules for 4th as opposed to 200+ for 6th. I don't even know how many 7th has. It all depends on what you like, some people want to play D&D, while others are happy to just play Heroquest. It just comes down to how complicated you want things to be.

Once the 4th ed Chaos Marines came out there was a good balance between the army books, there were some strong builds nothing was really over the top. Eldar skimmers were good but they were super expensive so it wasn't like the table was covered with them. Drop podding SM could be vicious OR a complete disaster. Tau could pump out shots, but were very flimsy in combat. Green tide was great in 4th. It was a good edition if you just wanted to get together w/friends and have a few hours of fun. Pick up games were easy, at least in my area, because everyone bought every book and it was easy to skim them over to get the gist. It was a good stream lined system.

Exactly my feeling of those years. Everything since is why my interest has waned depressingly. I think that the fourth edition era is very similar to the second edition era: the people that had the least fun, or the most problems, were not playing with laid-back enough friends (I stress "friends", not "opponents"). Every single edition since the first has enabled super-competitive players to make other people miserable, that's always been the elephant in the room.

Some of the most fun I've had in 40K were painting and converting armies for Space Wolves 13th Company, or an entire army of Kroot Mercs from Chapter Approved.

Eldar skimmers weren't particularly overly expensive. The Falcon after kit was typically ~185pts and was limited in FoC slots anyway, and was generally considered far more resilient than a Land Raider was at 250+. Wave Serpents (while lacking the raw firepower they have now treated all weapons higher than S8 as S8 and nothing ever got more than 1d6 armor pen) were even cheaper than they are now.

Then there were still lots of truly abysmal armies like DH and IG in 4E that played far worse than anything we have now.

 Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:Old school Victory points were still a thing, where the actual value of something killed mattered. If you killed a Land Raider, you got 250 VP's, and if you killed a Rhino you got 50 VP's (they were 50pts back then), whereas now they're *both* 1 VP, which is asinine. The book also defined margins of victory.

To be fair, though, this was basically 4th edition's only mission, apart from table quarters, which was a very silly way to play. When every game devolved to literally nothing more than who could kill the most stuff fastest, without even the pretense of things like serious board control, it did sort of limit the game.

VPs were nice, but missions, overall, have only been improving since 4th ed.

I respectfully disagree.

Maelstrom of War missions are ridiculous, with bs objectives completely unrelated to the fight at hand being generated every single turn.
When a turn symbolizes a minute or so of fighting, that's just ridiculous.

Some EW missions are acceptable, others are garbage where you only count two points on the battlefield, or just the Fast Attack choices.

Everything uses the completely anti tactical "first blood", "line breaker" and "slay the warlord".



The sure thing is that many tournaments still use KP, and they all use the new KP which is by far the dumbest metric ever, which in the end means that v7 missions are worse than v4 book missions.

Table quarters represented board control and KP represented murder control, and that's just everything war is about.



I would be delighted to have smarter objectives for sure, but what has been added since v4 is not smart and it breaks the immersion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ailaros wrote:
Tanks should have to pay for all of their armor, mobility and guns, and then have to pay to also be a transport. If not in points, then in some other way, such as risk.

I'm all for the risk, but when you talk about paying to be a transport, I'd argue that I have nothing in my codex worth transporting, except Fire Dragons because they're the only melta I've got access to.

Back in 4th with Rending, or 5th with cheap Fragons, why not, but today ??? Even if we had access to a Transport we couldn't care less because we have nothing worth transporting. That in itself is an issue though.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Eldar skimmers weren't particularly overly expensive. The Falcon after kit was typically ~185pts and was limited in FoC slots anyway, and was generally considered far more resilient than a Land Raider was at 250+. Wave Serpents (while lacking the raw firepower they have now treated all weapons higher than S8 as S8 and nothing ever got more than 1d6 armor pen) were even cheaper than they are now.

Then there were still lots of truly abysmal armies like DH and IG in 4E that played far worse than anything we have now.

it just wasn't that bad. A wave serpent with TL brigh lance, Shuriken cannon, vector engins, and spirit stones was 175pts and it was still BS 3. In 4th the average game was1850 that is 9% of your points for a vehicle that had very limited rolls. Plus you stull had to buy a unit to put in it.

With the bright lance it could hunt tanks, but outside a guard player people were not using more then a few vehicles. The bright lance didn't scare infantry because it could only kill 1 model at a time. You could give it TL scatter laser or TL shuriken cannon and go hunting infantry but the best weapon was AP4 so again outside of guard nobody cared because they still had a save, or in the case of Orks and nids more models.

The holo field everyone likes to complain about only worked to the front and rear, back was tototally exposed. Yes it did reduce strength greater than 8 to 8, but let us not forget that even then everyone and his squadmate had a meltagun that was getting through on a 4+. By the time you got to turn 3 or 4 it wasn't very hard to get behind the thing anyway.

Waver serpents were not scary at all.

Falcons were very seldom seen because they were a waste of points. Still BS 3, the pulse laser was not a lance weapon, if you put a bright lance on it, it couldn't move more than 6 and fire both, and it didn't even have the option for the energy field. In 4th in you saw a falcon you thanked your opponent for wasting points.

One thing though: v7 is by far the most balanced edition.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:


it just wasn't that bad. A wave serpent with TL brigh lance, Shuriken cannon, vector engins, and spirit stones was 175pts and it was still BS 3. In 4th the average game was1850 that is 9% of your points for a vehicle that had very limited rolls. Plus you stull had to buy a unit to put in it.

Almost nobody used the lances for two reasons, first, they were horrifically overcosted, and second, they just weren't necessary given the way vehicles worked, being able to kill on glances and pretty much shut down any gun-tank with any successful glance or pen. Scatterlasers were the big thing, and with those a Wave Serpent was 155pts, and couldn't be killed except by a 6 on the damage chart. Not impossible to kill, but certainly worlds more resilient than almost any other vehicle in the game, particularly in conjunction with the Strength and Pen reducing shield.

With the bright lance it could hunt tanks, but outside a guard player people were not using more then a few vehicles. The bright lance didn't scare infantry because it could only kill 1 model at a time. You could give it TL scatter laser or TL shuriken cannon and go hunting infantry but the best weapon was AP4 so again outside of guard nobody cared because they still had a save, or in the case of Orks and nids more models.

With a scatterlaser it worked just fine at killing infantry and light/medium vehicles (you could still kill outright on glances back then). I don't recall ever seeing a bright lance equipped one, though EML's were common. Scatterlasers were the most common weapon that I recall seeing.

IG typically didn't run many vehicles back then, largely because they were expensive, and very easily killed. A Chimera as kitted now with two guns (non-twin-linked), smoke, and searchlight was 89pts and if penetrated even just once (and not killed on a 4+) was automatically stunned and forced the unit to disembark and take a pinning test (which Skimmers never had to deal with), the Hellhound lacked Fast and didn't auto-hit, so largely most IG armies would just run 3 Russ tanks.

Eldar however routinely ran 7-8 very hard to kill Skimmer tanks, which, for 4E, was a lot of tanks. Tau also would routinely run a good number of tanks, with many of the same benefits.

The holo field everyone likes to complain about only worked to the front and rear, back was tototally exposed. Yes it did reduce strength greater than 8 to 8, but let us not forget that even then everyone and his squadmate had a meltagun that was getting through on a 4+. By the time you got to turn 3 or 4 it wasn't very hard to get behind the thing anyway.

I think I can count on one hand the number of Wave Serpents I managed to get behind and hurt without the Eldar player making the decision to sacrifice the serpent to unload cargo more effectively. That Meltagun was also drastically less effective not only because of the lack of double pen, but the SMF bonus that made AP1 non-functional against Skimmers.

Waver serpents were not scary at all.

Didn't say they were anything scary like they are now, but were exceedingly difficult to stop, particularly as with dedicated AT guns they were harder to put out of action than something like a Leman Russ tank was, provided reasonable firepower, and were almost impossible to stop from delivering their cargo, once kitted properly.

Falcons were very seldom seen because they were a waste of points. Still BS 3, the pulse laser was not a lance weapon, if you put a bright lance on it, it couldn't move more than 6 and fire both, and it didn't even have the option for the energy field. In 4th in you saw a falcon you thanked your opponent for wasting points

O_o Falcon were one of the major top tournament units. Even better than the Serpent's Energy Field, they could take Holofields (where the serpent could not), so any hit had to roll 2d6 pick the lowest for damage, meaning a kitted Falcon could only be destroyed on boxcars. They were what gave rise to the "Eldar Flying Circus", load them up with harlies, send them forward, turn 2 the Harlies disembarked and assaulted something, striking at I6 and rending on 6's to hit with Kiss's. Fire Dragons were another favorite. That was *the* combo to beat in the second half of 4th edition.

BS3 also wasn't as big of an issue back then, there was a whole lot less cover, vehicles couldn't get cover at all, most things were more expensive so there was less stuff to kill, and the firepower output of a BS3 Falcon still was nothing to sniff at (particularly when things like Russ tanks couldn't fire the main gun and other weapons at the same time at all).

Another huge deal was that you couldn't target IC's on their own unless they were the closest model, so you'd get Eldrad or a Farseer on a Jetbike hiding between the forward swept wings of an Eldar tank, completely untargetable, casting Doom, Fortune, Guide, etc.

The balance within and between codices was pretty poor for 3rd, 4th, and well into 5th. The basic engine was reasonably good, although all three editions have big problems with vehicles, missions, and assaults. 5th edition also started the nightmare of complex wound allocation.

By all acounts, the codices are more balanced now, but the core rules are incredibly bloated.

I doubt that anyone rule set could be picked up and used without a few tweaks, although you could argue that 4th edition would require the fewest (aside from the missions). Making Skimmers Moving fast into the same as hull down (so only on a 4+) and eliminating emergency disembarkation for anything other than destroyed transports, along with elminating entanglement, would fix a lot of the issues 4th edition had.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Target Priority was another thing, to shoot at something other than the closest unit, you had to take an Ld test, if you failed, you had to shoot at the closest unit. This was a major issue.

That was the straw. We gave up on 40K and wrote our own version thanks to 4th Ed.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Eldar however routinely ran 7-8 very hard to kill Skimmer tanks, which, for 4E, was a lot of tanks. Tau also would routinely run a good number of tanks, with many of the same benefits.

Didn't say they were anything scary like they are now, but were exceedingly difficult to stop, particularly as with dedicated AT guns they were harder to put out of action than something like a Leman Russ tank was, provided reasonable firepower, and were almost impossible to stop from delivering their cargo, once kitted properly.


O_o Falcon were one of the major top tournament units. Even better than the Serpent's Energy Field, they could take Holofields (where the serpent could not), so any hit had to roll 2d6 pick the lowest for damage, meaning a kitted Falcon could only be destroyed on boxcars. They were what gave rise to the "Eldar Flying Circus", load them up with harlies, send them forward, turn 2 the Harlies disembarked and assaulted something, striking at I6 and rending on 6's to hit with Kiss's. Fire Dragons were another favorite. That was *the* combo to beat in the second half of 4th edition.

I doubt 7-8 Skimmers in a highly competitive environment even with, 155 point Wave Serpent that is over 1000 points in vehicles. Yes they could be difficult to kill, but you still have to buy 7-8 units to put in them and an HQ. 7-8 is a huge exaggeration of the times.

Maybe you were not scared but you keep defending them as if you were intimidated in some way. The elder skimmers were good but they were not unbeatable.

How did these magical Harlequins get into combat. The Falcon was not an assault vehicle. Once they get out of the falcon, shoot them. They only had a 5 up invul. I recall only one time Harlequins got into combat with me and it was just the squad leader. Your millage may very but around my way they were so ineffective that people stopped using them because they were shot to death as soon as they got out. Even bolters would obliterate them. aT3 with a 5 up invul is very flimsy. Around me, and we played heavy tournaments, Scorpions and Fire Dragons were much more popular.

7-8 is what I faced fairly routinely. That's what I built for my own Eldar army in the last days of 4E/early 5E.

I'll avoid the inquiries into my psychological state and largely stick to how the units and rules actually worked. You can also do a quick google search and find dozens of threads on numerous forums and blogs regarding the issues with the Falcon relatively easily.

As for Harlies, in 4E you could assault out of a transport and assault as long as the transport had not moved (though it *could* pivot). Only wtth 6E in 2012 could you not assault out of a non-assault vehicle at all under any circumstances (you could do it in 5th but only if you didn't pivot).

So turn 1 you'd jet forward in the Falcons, turn 2 you'd pivot the transport, unload the harlies, Fleet of Foot in the shooting phase (like Run is now but was unique to this rule then), and assault in the assault phase. So you'd have a 10-15" total range from the rear hatch (after pivoting!) to use to get into assault range, meaning that hatch could be 20" away from the nearest enemy model at the start of the Eldar turn and the Harlies could still get stuck in.

On top of that, with a Shadowseer they could only ever be shot at from 2d6x2" away, so even if they wiped their target and couldn't consolidate into something else, they typically could only be shot at by units *very* close (on average within 14").

You didn't need 7-8 skimmers. 4th ed was all about VP. A falcon was practically indestructable and reasonably guaranteed to at least immobilize a vehicle or two or bring a squad or two down to half health, if not do much, much more than that. Its ratio of killing power to killability was absurd.

And, of course, if you were playing with table quarters, there was little better in the game at the time than a falcon or wave serpent.

And I actually sort of liked the old target prioritization rule. Ld is supposed to represent more than just bravery, which is nearly all it does now. It's also supposed to represent things like discipline under fire, like how it's used in the guard codex with orders, priest abilities, and the like. It also gave you more reason to take screening and harassment units, which haven't had any real purpose since 5th and especially 6th ed dropped.

kodi wrote:I sorely miss the "make your chapter" part of the SM codex, or the equivalent the guard had.

AegisGrimm wrote:Some of the most fun I've had in 40K were painting and converting armies for Space Wolves 13th Company, or an entire army of Kroot Mercs from Chapter Approved.

You can still do that now.

It's a misconception I see a lot about those days. Take guard doctrines, for example. People pine for them, forgetting that the codex that came after still had nearly all of them (except cheesy drop troops), they just didn't have them as a centralized thing anymore. Before you could run veterans and grenadiers and iron discipline, and after you could as well, they just got changed to by-unit options.

What 4th was, was saying "you can't do any of these things" and then coming back and writing chapter-approved exceptions to them. Since 5th ed it's been much more "do what you want". Now that we have unbound, you can't really say that you can't run things you could back in 4th ed anymore, while the possible ways you could combine things have exploded exponentially, way faster than people can write fluff about them.

The rules have become much less restrictive for fluffy players, not losing things they once could do.

 Ailaros wrote:

And I actually sort of liked the old target prioritization rule. Ld is supposed to represent more than just bravery, which is nearly all it does now. It's also supposed to represent things like discipline under fire, like how it's used in the guard codex with orders, priest abilities, and the like. It also gave you more reason to take screening and harassment units, which haven't had any real purpose since 5th and especially 6th ed dropped.

The problem is that one stat for all of these things is fairly silly (that's why there was originally 3 different stats, Int, Ld and Cool, and why Ogryns should be *very* hard to break but they use Ld as an intelligence dump stat instead...)

On top of that, it was intensely punitive as the armies which relied most on shooting (at least, infantry shooting) typically had the worst Ld, and the armies that didn't care about shooting were (and still are) very high leadership and often had rerolls (taking a basic SM captain back in 4E made your entire army Ld10).

DIdn't the target priority rules force you to shoot things you couldn't hurt? I may be remembering that incorrectly.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To be fair, the Hellhound was the only "torrent" unit in the game at that point. That was originally it's unique "schtick". That said, it having to hit on a 4+, or roll every model individually on a 4+, was incredibly lame

No, it was awesome. It meant the damned thing almost never missed.

You placed the template, then rolled to hit. If you hit, you hit everything. If you missed, you then rolled a D6 for everything touched and on a 4+ got a hit. It was so hard to miss with that thing. It was fantastic!

 Vaktathi wrote:
7-8 is what I faced fairly routinely. That's what I built for my own Eldar army in the last days of 4E/early 5E.

I'll avoid the inquiries into my psychological state and largely stick to how the units and rules actually worked. You can also do a quick google search and find dozens of threads on numerous forums and blogs regarding the issues with the Falcon relatively easily.

As for Harlies, in 4E you could assault out of a transport and assault as long as the transport had not moved (though it *could* pivot). Only wtth 6E in 2012 could you not assault out of a non-assault vehicle at all under any circumstances (you could do it in 5th but only if you didn't pivot).

So turn 1 you'd jet forward in the Falcons, turn 2 you'd pivot the transport, unload the harlies, Fleet of Foot in the shooting phase (like Run is now but was unique to this rule then), and assault in the assault phase. So you'd have a 10-15" total range from the rear hatch (after pivoting!) to use to get into assault range, meaning that hatch could be 20" away from the nearest enemy model at the start of the Eldar turn and the Harlies could still get stuck in.

On top of that, with a Shadowseer they could only ever be shot at from 2d6x2" away, so even if they wiped their target and couldn't consolidate into something else, they typically could only be shot at by units *very* close (on average within 14").

Back then most tournaments were 1850, 7 wave serpents and even if you take 6 squads of guardians(cheapest thing eldar have), that is 1565. That leaves you 285 points for an HQ and the grav weapons for the guardians. 7-8 highly unlikely.

So if you don't move the transport you lose the big benefit for being a fast skimmer that most people complain about.

That is a big part of looking back on editions, most of the complaints were things that rarely happened and just tend to be peoples over reaction to codex' they didn't do well against.

No but Eldar Skimmers were a nightmare and were near-indestructible. They were as much of a problem then as they are now.

O_o

Eldar could take cheaper units than 10man Guardian squads, 5 minimum sized dire avenger units with a Scatterlaser/Vectored Engines/Spirit Stones serpent will run 1025 points.

For 1850 what you'd commonly see is something generally resembling this, with some mixing and matching per player preference.

4 small squads of Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent

1 Fire Dragon unit in a Wave Serpent,

2 squads of Harlequins in Falcons

and a Jetbike farseer.

That's 7 skimmer tanks in 1850pts with largely untargetable psychic support.

Also, depending on positioning and relative distance of the enemy units, you didn't necessarily always *have* to pivot the transport, only if it was necessary, the vast majority of the time, with a 10-15" movement range, you could position the Falcon so that you didn't need to (particularly as Run did not exist for units to evade the harlies, they could only ever move 6")

And even then, I'd agree that wave serpents weren't the biggest problem. As mentioned, their relative lack of killing power made them slightly less awful, compared to a dual EML+shuricannon falcon.

But yeah, I don't think I ever destroyed a wave serpent in 4th edition. More survivable than the already-stupid falcon, but at least it didn't rip my army apart...

Really, 4th ed saw the original mech gunline. All the hate people poured on the leafblower, but moreso because it was the first to do it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No but Eldar Skimmers were a nightmare and were near-indestructible. They were as much of a problem then as they are now.

Agreed, weird how others don't remember. I would say they were worse in 4th. At least now they can be assaulted normally.

oh man, yeah, only ever hit on 6's in CC unless immobilized, on top of being hit on whatever armor facing the models are in contact with (so 12 typically)

An average of 432 S8 Powerfist attacks were needed to kill a Holofield Falcon in CC

That said, vehicles are absurdly easy to kill in CC in 7th edition, any marginally intact unit with any sort of CC upgrades will practically auto-delete a fully intact tank in one round of CC

 Byte wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No but Eldar Skimmers were a nightmare and were near-indestructible. They were as much of a problem then as they are now.

Agreed, weird how others don't remember. I would say they were worse in 4th. At least now they can be assaulted normally.

They had fewer guns (no shooting the serpent shield and no laser lock) in 4th, they were at least 50% more expensive, and they were all BS3. Much tougher (at least on anything with a Holofield), but nowhere near as silly as Wave Serpents today.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Byte wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No but Eldar Skimmers were a nightmare and were near-indestructible. They were as much of a problem then as they are now.

Agreed, weird how others don't remember. I would say they were worse in 4th. At least now they can be assaulted normally.

They had fewer guns (no shooting the serpent shield and no laser lock) in 4th, they were at least 50% more expensive, and they were all BS3. Much tougher (at least on anything with a Holofield), but nowhere near as silly as Wave Serpents today.

Offensively...

Give me a survivability any game. Scoring wins.

It's also not like the Wave Serpent currently can't be insanely survivable, between the shield and a potential 3+ cover save in the open, the only easy way to crack it is through assault.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's also not like the Wave Serpent currently can't be insanely survivable, between the shield and a potential 3+ cover save in the open, the only easy way to crack it is through assault.

I'll take it!*

*remembers playing an RTT where I had two SM assault squads wrapped around a WS and it laughed at me.

 Vaktathi wrote:
An average of 432 S8 Powerfist attacks were needed to kill a Holofield Falcon in CC

That's why you got behind 'em with Bolt Pistols!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
An average of 432 S8 Powerfist attacks were needed to kill a Holofield Falcon in CC

That's why you got behind 'em with Bolt Pistols!

Bikes were also very effective at doing this.

I used to rush 'em. Fire off all the bolt pistols and then charge in. Get enough attacks in and you're bound to get a couple of glances.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
An average of 432 S8 Powerfist attacks were needed to kill a Holofield Falcon in CC

That's why you got behind 'em with Bolt Pistols!

Still rolling 2d6 pick the lowest for armor pen

That happened, but wasn't always an easy thing to do.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
An average of 432 S8 Powerfist attacks were needed to kill a Holofield Falcon in CC

That's why you got behind 'em with Bolt Pistols!

Bikes were also very effective at doing this.

They could be, but they were relatively uncommon. I don't think I saw non-Eldar bikers more than once or twice in 4E (at least before Orks in the last few months of the edition), they lacked many of the bonuses they have now (no Jink, they remained natural T4 vs Instant Death), and SM bikers were 32pts base, CSM bikers were 33/34pts each. and (until the last 6 months of 4E) Ork bikers were 30ppm and had to rely on a 5+ cover save for everything

Yeah, I distinctly recall the chatter about bikes being terrible at the time.

Though this one when someone at my store regularly ran a techmarine on a bike because it was cool.

Which it was.

I'll just step in and say I really really hated wound allocation from older editions. I'm probably the only one, but I have horrible memories of my opponent running a unit of ork nob bikers that had about 10 models, and they all were equipped slightly differently. The rules said you had to remove multi-wound models when possible (so no spreading wounds around, you had to put two wounds on each model), but that only applied for units where they were all equipped the same. This 10 man strong unit with T5 and an inherent 5+ cover save (before ignore cover grew on trees) had to take about 11 wounds before any of them left the table. That one unit wiped out my entire army multiple times.

 dementedwombat wrote:
I'll just step in and say I really really hated wound allocation from older editions. I'm probably the only one, but I have horrible memories of my opponent running a unit of ork nob bikers that had about 10 models, and they all were equipped slightly differently. The rules said you had to remove multi-wound models when possible (so no spreading wounds around, you had to put two wounds on each model), but that only applied for units where they were all equipped the same. This 10 man strong unit with T5 and an inherent 5+ cover save (before ignore cover grew on trees) had to take about 11 wounds before any of them left the table. That one unit wiped out my entire army multiple times.

That was 5th edition you're thinking of, in 4E it was not possible to do that.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I'll just step in and say I really really hated wound allocation from older editions. I'm probably the only one, but I have horrible memories of my opponent running a unit of ork nob bikers that had about 10 models, and they all were equipped slightly differently. The rules said you had to remove multi-wound models when possible (so no spreading wounds around, you had to put two wounds on each model), but that only applied for units where they were all equipped the same. This 10 man strong unit with T5 and an inherent 5+ cover save (before ignore cover grew on trees) had to take about 11 wounds before any of them left the table. That one unit wiped out my entire army multiple times.

That was 5th edition you're thinking of, in 4E it was not possible to do that.

Ok, it's been a while. I'm not surprised I'm getting my editions mixed up. Now you mention it I'm pretty sure 4th was the "outflanking genestealers and the doom stomped me repeatedly" edition. You're right, 5th was the "ork bikers stomped me repeatedly" edition.

The fact I have only played Tau since 3rd edition probably is what makes me not remember earlier editions particularly fondly. That brief window when 6th edition hit but before we got our new codex were some of my favorite games come to think of it. That said, whenever people complain about Tau, I just think back to how we were a bottom tier army for an easy 2.5-3 editions.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Consolidation into combat was another issue, particularly in conjunction with the above two things, in that once something got stuck into close combat (often without ever having been able to be shot at), it could simply move from combat to combat, hiding from any sort of shooting retaliation, and simply rolling up a line.

IIRC, that was actually a bigger problem in 3rd edition. 4th still allowed you to consolidate straight into another unit, but also let the enemy shoot the consolidating unit in the following shooting phase.

dementedwombat wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I'll just step in and say I really really hated wound allocation from older editions. I'm probably the only one, but I have horrible memories of my opponent running a unit of ork nob bikers that had about 10 models, and they all were equipped slightly differently. The rules said you had to remove multi-wound models when possible (so no spreading wounds around, you had to put two wounds on each model), but that only applied for units where they were all equipped the same. This 10 man strong unit with T5 and an inherent 5+ cover save (before ignore cover grew on trees) had to take about 11 wounds before any of them left the table. That one unit wiped out my entire army multiple times.

That was 5th edition you're thinking of, in 4E it was not possible to do that.

Ok, it's been a while. I'm not surprised I'm getting my editions mixed up. Now you mention it I'm pretty sure 4th was the "outflanking genestealers and the doom stomped me repeatedly" edition. You're right, 5th was the "ork bikers stomped me repeatedly" edition.

The fact I have only played Tau since 3rd edition probably is what makes me not remember earlier editions particularly fondly. That brief window when 6th edition hit but before we got our new codex were some of my favorite games come to think of it. That said, whenever people complain about Tau, I just think back to how we were a bottom tier army for an easy 2.5-3 editions.

Tau weren't bad in 4E, Fish-o-Fury was pretty solid, but were usually some iteration of "3 units of crisis suits, some Fire Warriors in Devilfish, and HS units maxed out with Hammerheads or Broadsides"

insaniak wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Consolidation into combat was another issue, particularly in conjunction with the above two things, in that once something got stuck into close combat (often without ever having been able to be shot at), it could simply move from combat to combat, hiding from any sort of shooting retaliation, and simply rolling up a line.

IIRC, that was actually a bigger problem in 3rd edition. 4th still allowed you to consolidate straight into another unit, but also let the enemy shoot the consolidating unit in the following shooting phase.

Alas, you could not do this in 4E :(

Jesus, I guess 4th ed. just damaged you guys a helluva lot more than me. I had lots of fun in that era, though I must be wierd because from back then I have at least 15-20 bikers spread across three Space Marine armies, I only ran Eldar with a single Wave Serpent, a single Falcon, and two Vypers (Saim-Hann themed army, so I have two large squads of jetbikes and pathfinders as infantry so I don't need lots of skimmer transport).

If you're playing friendly matches with a bit of homeruling it doesn't really matter what edition you're playing. Every one of them has flaws.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Jesus, I guess 4th ed. just damaged you guys a helluva lot more than me. I had lots of fun in that era, though I must be wierd because from back then I have at least 15-20 bikers spread across three Space Marine armies, I only ran Eldar with a single Wave Serpent, a single Falcon, and two Vypers (Saim-Hann themed army, so I have two large squads of jetbikes and pathfinders as infantry so I don't need lots of skimmer transport).

In my area the only thing that was crazy in 4th was the 3.5 Chaos Marine codex. We saw a lot of Daemonets and noise marines. Nurgel could be tough but not crazy. Khorne was good but we didn't see too many of them, I still don't understand how a loin cloth justifies giving blood letter a 3+ armour save , but oh well. The 4th ed dex brought them in line with the rest.

We had one guy that was fond of running 3 squads of 2 land speeders w/assault cannon and heavy bolter. The big thing was you had to take out both to get any points, IIRC back then you had to reduce a unit below 50% for full points. It was tough to play against but not over the top. He hated my guard w/10 chimeras

IIRC we had a good mix of all armies except Catachans. We even had a few Daemon and Witch Hunters.

Bloodletters were weird in 3E and 4E, they were the odd Beastman looking things before GW went back to the original design at the beginning of 5E.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:


it just wasn't that bad. A wave serpent with TL brigh lance, Shuriken cannon, vector engins, and spirit stones was 175pts and it was still BS 3. In 4th the average game was1850 that is 9% of your points for a vehicle that had very limited rolls. Plus you stull had to buy a unit to put in it.

Almost nobody used the lances for two reasons, first, they were horrifically overcosted, and second, they just weren't necessary given the way vehicles worked, being able to kill on glances and pretty much shut down any gun-tank with any successful glance or pen. Scatterlasers were the big thing, and with those a Wave Serpent was 155pts, and couldn't be killed except by a 6 on the damage chart. Not impossible to kill, but certainly worlds more resilient than almost any other vehicle in the game, particularly in conjunction with the Strength and Pen reducing shield.

With the bright lance it could hunt tanks, but outside a guard player people were not using more then a few vehicles. The bright lance didn't scare infantry because it could only kill 1 model at a time. You could give it TL scatter laser or TL shuriken cannon and go hunting infantry but the best weapon was AP4 so again outside of guard nobody cared because they still had a save, or in the case of Orks and nids more models.

With a scatterlaser it worked just fine at killing infantry and light/medium vehicles (you could still kill outright on glances back then). I don't recall ever seeing a bright lance equipped one, though EML's were common. Scatterlasers were the most common weapon that I recall seeing.

Bright Lance Wave Serpents was v5

I never got any of them, but I did like the look of the metal bloodletters with the furry backs. If I remember correctly they.just had a loin cloth and chains. I don't know how the designers justified giving them an armour save from that. Weren't they the only daemons with both armour and an invulnerable save . A friend of my always takled about making some out of berserkers and beastmen, so the models matched the rules. I don't think he ever did it though.

Oh, 3rd ed chain axes and choppas WTF, crazy rules. That is what you saved that unit of scouts for guard didn't care because everything except guardians and grots ment death for them.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:


Back then most tournaments were 1850, 7 wave serpents and even if you take 6 squads of guardians(cheapest thing eldar have), that is 1565. That leaves you 285 points for an HQ and the grav weapons for the guardians. 7-8 highly unlikely.

So if you don't move the transport you lose the big benefit for being a fast skimmer that most people complain about.

That is a big part of looking back on editions, most of the complaints were things that rarely happened and just tend to be peoples over reaction to codex' they didn't do well against.

I thought v4 was more about 2000 points.

2k didn't really become standard until 5E.

Most places did 1500/1750/1850, UK usually did more 1500 and US more 1750/1850.

morgoth wrote:

I thought v4 was more about 2000 points.

I can't speak for other places but most of ours were 1850 in 3rd and 4th. I can't remember 5th, that's around when I stopped playing tournaments.

 Vaktathi wrote:
2k didn't really become standard until 5E.

Most places did 1500/1750/1850, UK usually did more 1500 and US more 1750/1850.

That makes sense, I only saw the end of v4 and probably became interested in tournaments at the beginning of v5.

 Vaktathi wrote:
2k didn't really become standard until 5E.

Most places did 1500/1750/1850, UK usually did more 1500 and US more 1750/1850.

I mostly recall people talking 1500, myself, and that was in the US. Of course, my FLGS only played 1000 points then, because it was really tiny, so could only fit 4x4 foot tables in them.

Also, don't forget points deflation, people. 1500 points got you a lot fewer models back in the day. It depends on the army, I suppose, but I'd say that the number of models it used to be the most common to field would now be best represented by ~1250 points. If not fewer.

 Ailaros wrote:

Also, don't forget points deflation, people. 1500 points got you a lot fewer models back in the day. It depends on the army, I suppose, but I'd say that the number of models it used to be the most common to field would now be best represented by ~1250 points. If not fewer.

There is no points deflation for Eldar from the v4 codex to the v6 codex, I don't know how it is for other armies.

Looking at my Deathwing army lists, I'd say overall the points costs didn't really come down much between 4th and 6th edition books. Some stuff became cheaper, some got more expensive.

For Tau, almost everything became cheaper though between old and the new book.

morgoth wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

Also, don't forget points deflation, people. 1500 points got you a lot fewer models back in the day. It depends on the army, I suppose, but I'd say that the number of models it used to be the most common to field would now be best represented by ~1250 points. If not fewer.

There is no points deflation for Eldar from the v4 codex to the v6 codex, I don't know how it is for other armies.

Tacticals were 16ppm in 5th (iirc the price in 4th were the same) now they are down to 14 and even get CT for free.
Tau got way cheaper over the board as has been said.
CSM got 3 points cheaper but lost an attack and 1 ld which they now can get upgrades for.
Daemonhunters/GKs is really hard to tell and i would have to search for the pdf-file.

Tactical marines were 15pt in 4th edition C:SM. However, they did not have pistols, and had to pay if they wanted grenades.

Big thing, of course, was ability to take heavy and special weapon for 5-man squad.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
In my area the only thing that was crazy in 4th was the 3.5 Chaos Marine codex. We saw a lot of Daemonets and noise marines. Nurgel could be tough but not crazy. Khorne was good but we didn't see too many of them, I still don't understand how a loin cloth justifies giving blood letter a 3+ armour save , but oh well. The 4th ed dex brought them in line with the rest.

And destroyed the army's soul.

Not a fair exchange.

 Shadox wrote:

morgoth wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:

Also, don't forget points deflation, people. 1500 points got you a lot fewer models back in the day. It depends on the army, I suppose, but I'd say that the number of models it used to be the most common to field would now be best represented by ~1250 points. If not fewer.

There is no points deflation for Eldar from the v4 codex to the v6 codex, I don't know how it is for other armies.

Tacticals were 16ppm in 5th (iirc the price in 4th were the same) now they are down to 14 and even get CT for free.
Tau got way cheaper over the board as has been said.
CSM got 3 points cheaper but lost an attack and 1 ld which they now can get upgrades for.
Daemonhunters/GKs is really hard to tell and i would have to search for the pdf-file.

Arguably, Tau was near unplayable at that time, so it makes sense that it would see a price decrease.

I also remembered more expensive Tacs, but that doesn't really make for a codex wide point cost decrease.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Backfire wrote:
Tactical marines were 15pt in 4th edition C:SM. However, they did not have pistols, and had to pay if they wanted grenades.

Big thing, of course, was ability to take heavy and special weapon for 5-man squad.

Certainly worth at least one point, if not more.

I am reading all this, cheers guys

So I went and looked at the penultimate guard list I ran in 4th ed and rebuilt it using the current rules set, and it wound up being only 6% cheaper, but it also got better. Officers didn't used to give orders, for example, nor did priests confer fearless. The sentinels now outflank and the vet squad has 5 more guys in it.

If I go to my ultimate list of 4th ed, I saved 13%. And that is, once again, with stuff getting better. If that's the case, then 1300 is the new 1500.

Not everything has been decreasing over time. Basilisks and land raiders cost the same, for example. But in general, things have been going down in points and up in quality. You know, unless you were running defiler spam...

Oh, also, about mech guard. It may have been difficult to take chimeras outside of doctrines, but I think the bigger problem was the rest of the motor pool. Your only other vehicular options were the regular hellhound, scout sentinel, basilisk and the two worst russes. It became a lot easier to run mech once you had lots of options for artillery and tanks.

 Vaktathi wrote:

insaniak wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Consolidation into combat was another issue, particularly in conjunction with the above two things, in that once something got stuck into close combat (often without ever having been able to be shot at), it could simply move from combat to combat, hiding from any sort of shooting retaliation, and simply rolling up a line.

IIRC, that was actually a bigger problem in 3rd edition. 4th still allowed you to consolidate straight into another unit, but also let the enemy shoot the consolidating unit in the following shooting phase.

Alas, you could not do this in 4E :(

Yeah, apparently I had misremembered...

Still easily countered in most cases by just not bunching your units up.

Or playing Guard, and just swarming them. Seriously, I never met an assault unit I didn't like playing my Guard.

Oh no! A full unit of Scorpions is eating up one of my Guard squads. Let's see how they like 30 more bodies thrown at them...

Problem is that often (even still) they'd win combat by 1 or 2 and sweep the lot, particularly as blobs weren't a thing and Commissars were both less functional and more expensive than they are now.

IG units also were painfully overcosted, t was pretty routine for a basic 10man squad to cost nearly a hundred points after kit, and that was before any Doctrines. A Vostroyan unit was 105pts before an Ld8 Vet Sergeant or any special/heavy weapons.

Blobs weren't a thing, but MSU and speedbumps still were. If your striking scorpions didn't hit close combat until turn 3, and spent the next two turns eating two or three PISs, then they still didn't necessarily make their points back, even with the old consolidation rule.

Plus, if a few of them were killed by bayonets, then the scorpion squad was only worth half points, and that really killed the points conversion.

Also, I can't remember how many times I permanently tarpitted something with a sentinel. They used to be harder to kill in close combat back in the day, especially given how relatively rarer high-S CC weapons were. And you couldn't run away just because you couldn't hurt it either.

... and you couldn't kill by HP either, which means if you did, finally, take down the sentinel, you had a half chance of causing a vehicle explosion and losing a few models in the process. Man, I really miss the sentinel bomb days.

Or when screeners and harassment units had more of a use, specifically in stopping problems like this.

 Ailaros wrote:
Blobs weren't a thing, but MSU and speedbumps still were. If your striking scorpions didn't hit close combat until turn 3, and spent the next two turns eating two or three PISs, then they still didn't necessarily make their points back, even with the old consolidation rule.

With the old costs of guardsmen the probably were

Plus, if a few of them were killed by bayonets, then the scorpion squad was only worth half points, and that really killed the points conversion.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I am reading all this, cheers guys

Agreed! I haven't been keeping as much of an eye on the 40k section lately but I am enjoying this discussion. Enough to consider picking up 4th and seeing if other people in my area are interested.

Pro's: It's 40K and 40K is fething awesome.

Con's: Everythig to do with terrain and LoS.

Vaktathi wrote:Even assuming a minimum sized squad of 5 with no upgrades, if they made it into combat they're going to kill 6 guardsmen on the first round (and likely sweep the rest), and the remaining guardsmen might kill one *every other round* before they get swept.

That's a powerful calculus to work against, particularly with how expensive guardsmen were back then.

Though you could always counterattack with other guardsmen, or the odd priest or sentinel.

Plus, the guard player would have three turns to shoot at those scorpions before they made it into close combat. If they did at all.

Vaktathi wrote:in 4E they were pretty close to as easy to kill as they are now, AV10 open topped (no armored sentinel) and killed on a 5+ on a glance and 3+ on a pen, but as noted Krak Grenades weren't almost universal basic equipment which is the bigger thing, though Powerfists were on any unit that could take them (and had more attacks).

I suppose I mostly played ork, tyranid and guard in 4th ed. Some necron as well. None of them were big on high-S CC weapons.

Tyranid were especially funny. A carnifex could snap one in half, of course, but hive tyrants built without CC couldn't damage them quickly, and zoanthropes and warriors couldn't hurt them at all. The basic strategy was to scout them forward and then make a beeline for the nearest synapse creature and watch as the tyranid player had to either bail out their warriors or run the gribblies out of synapse, which I recall being a lot riskier of a prospect back in the day.

Also, someone mentioned drop pods. The first time I encountered them was against black templar, which pretty much curbstomped me as a guard player. After that, though, yeah, they were rather more hit or miss. Just like how you learned to position troops against the CC wave, you learned to castle against drop pods. By 5th ed, I'd seen them enough to be only rarely bothered by them.

AegisGrimm wrote:Some of the most fun I've had in 40K were painting and converting armies for Space Wolves 13th Company, or an entire army of Kroot Mercs from Chapter Approved.

You can still do that now.

It's a misconception I see a lot about those days. Take guard doctrines, for example. People pine for them, forgetting that the codex that came after still had nearly all of them (except cheesy drop troops), they just didn't have them as a centralized thing anymore. Before you could run veterans and grenadiers and iron discipline, and after you could as well, they just got changed to by-unit options.

What 4th was, was saying "you can't do any of these things" and then coming back and writing chapter-approved exceptions to them. Since 5th ed it's been much more "do what you want". Now that we have unbound, you can't really say that you can't run things you could back in 4th ed anymore, while the possible ways you could combine things have exploded exponentially, way faster than people can write fluff about them.

The rules have become much less restrictive for fluffy players, not losing things they once could do.

Well, that's only partially true if I am reading you right. I really doubt anyone out there would let me use the rules for 13th Company or Kroot Mercs in current edition games. Maybe 13th Company, but their more elite stats would probably be griped about, as well as the Kroot having their old close combat ability back. Other than the lack of older edition armies like those to field or defend against flyers, which would let modern armies eat them alive.

I personally feel like restrictions are more fluffy than having no restrictions.

For example I think its fluffy for a riptide to be restricted to 1 per 1500 points (example) but entirely unfluffy for them to make their own army.

This is why I like doctrines in my 4e book. Because it restricts and through those restrictions you get options and choices.

The current codex doesnt do this and in my opinion only gets worse. Thats my opinion though, I think restrictions are a good indicator of how well done a game is in both balance and options.

I like the old system too, but really? You have more options when you have fewer options?

In a way, 4th ed was paint by numbers, while 7th ed is a blank canvas. Certainly not everyone can stare at a blank word document and write a novel in it or stare at a ball of clay and see the pot in their mind. The sort of creativity is a function of problem solving thing - no problem, no creativity, even if you want there to be.

... but. You can still, as mentioned, replicate all that old stuff in one form or another with the current rules, and those people who are more adroit at painting on blank canvases have a bit more space to work with.

Yea.

I dont think blank canvas works for fluff or balance personally. I think blank canvas only works in certain situations.

I like options, but limited in a sensible way. Like for example currently conscripts are limited to one per platoon. I need to take 25 men per conscript squad.

Back in 4th edition I could have a conscript army but at the cost of other options. Which I find both fluffy through the use of options. Thats just an example.

Of course doctrines arent very good either, but I like that system better. Its less generalist and more specialist in terms of options. But you didnt have to use doctrines if you wanted generalist. Which I thought was fine.

 Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:Even assuming a minimum sized squad of 5 with no upgrades, if they made it into combat they're going to kill 6 guardsmen on the first round (and likely sweep the rest), and the remaining guardsmen might kill one *every other round* before they get swept.

That's a powerful calculus to work against, particularly with how expensive guardsmen were back then.

Though you could always counterattack with other guardsmen, or the odd priest or sentinel.

I don't recall Priests ever getting use, they were 40pts, and largely just made your units unable to shoot well and all they really offered is the current equivalent of "hatred". I don't think I ever saw even just a speculative army list that included them. You could throw more guardsmen in, but often you'd need 3x their number to really make the difference, and with the raw number of bodies even just two units have it was hard to get that many in.

Plus, the guard player would have three turns to shoot at those scorpions before they made it into close combat. If they did at all.

Depending on how they were deployed. Often they'd infiltrate and you'd get one or two turns of shooting, or they'd be in a Wave Serpent, they'd zoom up on turn one and then unload and assault on turn 2.

This isn't to say everything was impossible, but there's a reason IG were largely a joke in competitive terms throughout both 3E and 4E, being almost completely absent from top tables in GT's until the 2009 book came out, they weren't an army anyone really needed to remember and think of when they designed and built lists.

I suppose I mostly played ork, tyranid and guard in 4th ed. Some necron as well. None of them were big on high-S CC weapons.

I don't think I saw an Ork army in something beyond a 1000pt game until the 2008 codex came out, and by then they all had Powerklaws

Necrons generally wouldn't assault anything except with Destroyer Lords or the odd Wraith.

Tyranid were especially funny. A carnifex could snap one in half, of course, but hive tyrants built without CC couldn't damage them quickly, and zoanthropes and warriors couldn't hurt them at all. The basic strategy was to scout them forward and then make a beeline for the nearest synapse creature and watch as the tyranid player had to either bail out their warriors or run the gribblies out of synapse, which I recall being a lot riskier of a prospect back in the day.

I don't think I saw a single Tyranid warrior in all of 4E (to be fair, I haven't seen them much since then either). Tyrants didn't need a whole lot of CC, they got 2d6 for armor pen and three attacks base. I think every Tyranid list I faced in 4E was either infiltrating Stealershock, or 7-8 Monstrous Creature Nidzilla.

Also, someone mentioned drop pods. The first time I encountered them was against black templar, which pretty much curbstomped me as a guard player. After that, though, yeah, they were rather more hit or miss. Just like how you learned to position troops against the CC wave, you learned to castle against drop pods. By 5th ed, I'd seen them enough to be only rarely bothered by them.

Drop pods were also a lot funkier, they couldn't come in turn 1, and the old reserve rolls spread stuff out more, also they required opponents permission in "non-standard" missions

 Ailaros wrote:
So I went and looked at the penultimate guard list I ran in 4th ed and rebuilt it using the current rules set, and it wound up being only 6% cheaper, but it also got better. Officers didn't used to give orders, for example, nor did priests confer fearless. The sentinels now outflank and the vet squad has 5 more guys in it.

If I go to my ultimate list of 4th ed, I saved 13%. And that is, once again, with stuff getting better. If that's the case, then 1300 is the new 1500.

Not everything has been decreasing over time. Basilisks and land raiders cost the same, for example. But in general, things have been going down in points and up in quality. You know, unless you were running defiler spam...

Oh, also, about mech guard. It may have been difficult to take chimeras outside of doctrines, but I think the bigger problem was the rest of the motor pool. Your only other vehicular options were the regular hellhound, scout sentinel, basilisk and the two worst russes. It became a lot easier to run mech once you had lots of options for artillery and tanks.

I think this is more of a lateral shift. Its the codex that allowed the Guard to be stronger, not the current rule set. I can think of a few current codexs that would love rending to still be determined on the to hit roll. Or that Furious Charge still gave +1 Initative. Saying the 7th ed codex is stronger than the 4th just isn't correct. I know for a fact that a few SM armies still wish that Tiggy + Fear the Darkness was an auto win against low LD armies. I know I wish my old Ork Speed Freek army was still viable with a burna and scorcha in every squad. Also the deliciousness of a preliminary bombardment.

I also think in the spirit of the original OP statement we are all getting caught up in the memories of the tournament competitive lists. Yeah, competitive Eldar skimmer spam was horrible. But the only skimmer that the OPs armies, SM and Guard, have access to is the landspeeder. The skimmers moving fast rule will not be a game breaker here. I also would assume that most armies that show up to play this sort of game would be of the pick up, none super competitive variety as many of the units that did exist no longer exist and instead of doing massive weapon swaps for a weekend game, you will end up with a lot more armies that just bring what still fits, instead of tailored.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Problem is that often (even still) they'd win combat by 1 or 2 and sweep the lot, particularly as blobs weren't a thing and Commissars were both less functional and more expensive than they are now.

IG units also were painfully overcosted, t was pretty routine for a basic 10man squad to cost nearly a hundred points after kit, and that was before any Doctrines. A Vostroyan unit was 105pts before an Ld8 Vet Sergeant or any special/heavy weapons.

IG didn't have blob squads as they did in 5th or the current book. However the 3.5 dex did have Conscripts 20-50 of them with an independent commissar were great at holding things up. I remember rifle butting a carnifex to death on a few occasions with them.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Or playing Guard, and just swarming them. Seriously, I never met an assault unit I didn't like playing my Guard.

Oh no! A full unit of Scorpions is eating up one of my Guard squads. Let's see how they like 30 more bodies thrown at them...

Oh. My. God. Finally someone else gets it. There was this one guy in my town who completely trounced everyone by doing exactly that. I mean everyone. He had like a 40-0 win streak. That's why I just facepalm when bad gunline players complain about sweeping advance and such.

Ah,now sentinal bombs, those I remember.

See, I love sentinels, even still, but I did love running them up at things and having them blow up on people. Not so useful against MEQs, but many a gaunt, ork or eldar died to my suicidal sentinels.

I tried to get my local group to give 4th a go; most people didn't play it, but are extremely frustrated with 7th, both in terms of shoddy balance and extremely fluff-unfriendly rules. Forge the narrative my ass.

However, the problem I've found with gamers of all stripes is they're remarkably apathetic, and convincing them to do something out of the proscribed norm is obscenely difficult. Hell, our FLGS has all the codexes, the BRB and most of the white dwarfs from that era just on a shelf by the game tables for open use. But everyone just goes "meh" and continues their arms race through 7th's awful rules.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Ah,now sentinal bombs, those I remember.

There was a tale in our group of the "Overenthusiastic Warlock", who, along with his squad of brave Guardians, charged a Sentinel. The Warlock easily destroyed the Sentinel with his cheating Eldar weapon, and the Sentinel proceeded to explode, killing all the Guardians.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 MajorStoffer wrote:
Ah,now sentinal bombs, those I remember.

There was a tale in our group of the "Overenthusiastic Warlock", who, along with his squad of brave Guardians, charged a Sentinel. The Warlock easily destroyed the Sentinel with his cheating Eldar weapon, and the Sentinel proceeded to explode, killing all the Guardians.

My personal favourite experience was charging a just-deepstriked 10 man Stormtrooper squad in 5th, exploding, and killing 7 of them.

2nd most cost-effective sentinel ever.

My first was one-shotting Eldrad with a Multilaser; hit once, wound once, fail all the saves, victim of Toughness Elf. Glorious.

Ah, Sentinels, if they weren't stupid expensive to buy, I'd run 9 of them.

 MajorStoffer wrote:


My first was one-shotting Eldrad with a Multilaser; hit once, wound once, fail all the saves, victim of Toughness Elf. Glorious.

Wasn't he T4 at the time ? I haven't opened my v4 codex in a while.