How do?

Many many moons ago, when I was young and you were younger, we all played 2nd Edition 40k. See Young Ones, there was pretty much bugger all else to play.

As fond as my memories were, the game was completely hatstand. You think 40k has balance issues now! Oh bless your cotton socks, you’ve no idea in that youthful mind of yours

Up to a certain point, specific armies could be utterly undone before the first turn started proper. Yep, I’m talking Virus Bomb. This was a card you played at the start of the battle. If you were in Power Armour, it did basically nothing at all to you. If not? Well. Might as well redeploy because it’s Next Game O’Clock! A card so notoriously crap and unbalanced, Andy Chambers apologised via White Dwarf and asked everyone to cut their copy up.

2nd Edition, where I typically spent more time working out what my various grenades did between turns that actually taking my turn (I’ll never forget a Master Librarian legging it away from a particularly dogged Vortex template in a near Benny Hill style). If you’d lobbed the unholy four (smoke, blind, plasma and Vortex) you had to make a roll for each grenade (not type mind you) to see what happened. And entire squads could throw them back then. Happy, but very, very silly days.

Another example? Hey kid? Ever seen 16 War Walkers taken out by a single Bolt Pistol? I have. Whole mob of them coming down one flank. They’d just cleared a bottleneck of terrain, so were inevitably bunched up tight. Single Blood Claw takes a crack, and kills a pilot (to be fair, they had a 2+ invulnerable save. They whiffed it). That sent the bipedal menace spiralling...right into two more. Collision damage took them out, and the rest fell like dominoes. Utterly cool, but also very, very silly.

One last example before I open the floor to others you ask! Well. I shall indulge you. Back then, any character could have Combat Drugs. Whilst not without risk, they turned your chosen benefactor into a raving psycho loony. Pop them on a Chief Librarian, and cast some choice powers? All but unstoppable. To the point they were also unfunny to face down. Which is why I regularly made judicious use of Vortex Grenades. Expensive, yes. But a ‘nope hole’ when you needed was worth the points!

Ok. Enough from me for now. What’re your memories of those crazy, hatstand halcyon days?

Golly, I started in 3rd and I only had chance to have a look at the 2nd edition weapons book, but I am so curious to hear more!
Thanks Doc!

Oh man. Don't get me started on the fuss placing the Immolator flametank's templates.

On the plus side, then end looked like boobies, and I was like 11 at the time.

But you shall go into exacting detail of such template placement.

Also.....boobies....fnarr.

Our group almost never used grenades (Mostly I think, because we forgot we had them)

Most of our battles were pretty standard, we ignored the silliness and played RAI

I don't think we ever used combat drugs and used a vortex grenade maybe once.

I always liked how long it took to deal with a unit shooting at a vehicle.

1) Everyone shoots. Take each hit individually through;
2) Now let's see where the hits hit the vehicle.
3) Now let's see what type of weapon was used.
4)Check that against the armor of the vehicle.
5) Now roll to see what type/how much of damage you did.

I honestly can't remember if vehicles got a saving throw or not but I tend to think that they did.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But you shall go into exacting detail of such template placement.

Also.....boobies....fnarr.

Okay so if I recall correctly...

... you had to place the template so that the edges were touching (think of two cones [the flamer templates] sharing the same vertex). They could nether be split apart nor overlap. But, of course, you wanted to cover as many models in the target unit as you could with each template - and at the time, the printout/copied templates caused all kinds of issues, between warping, resizing for printers, etc. AND GOOD LUCK IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE TWO TEMPLATES YOU NINCOMPOOP.

There was even a diagram in the 2nd edition SOB codex (were Canonesses were WS7 and T5) that I still remember vaguely.

Can someone explain vehicle movement? Because looking at the 2nd ed sisters codex it looks hilariously over complicated compared to 8th.

I remember there was a turning template (GW loved their templates) and IIRC if your turn stayed under the template, movement was normal, if you turned more than, up to 90 deg your movement was halved or something like that.

I sadly missed out but was able to have a look at some of the rules.

2nd ed had a LOT of markers. Plasma that had not dissapated, blind grenades, Destructor templates (unlike 3rd-7th where Destructor was a Heavy Flamer, it was a slow-moving "wave" that traveled in a straight line across several turns), Buzzer Squigs, Blight Grenades, oh my!

Orks had a Psychic Power called Kop Dis, which could pushed a model d6+1" inches away from the Weirdboy. However, it also had the addendum "Kop Dis can also be used on area templates such as Vortex, Hellfire and Plasma bursts. If an Area effect template is moved, it will score a hit on anything it moves over."

So Orks could bring a few Plasma Cannons, have their blasts stay in place for a turn, and have Weirdboyz move the resulting bursts forward in a Kamehamewaaaagh!

I was wrong about vehicle movement (go figure, it was over 20 years ago LOL)

While people say it was complicated, it really wasn't.
Normal vehicles could not move and fire all weapons, move 6" and fire 1 or move 12" and fire none. Could turn as much as they wanted.

Lumbering vehicles could only move 6" in a straight line, but could fire all their weapons

Fast vehicle could move 6" and fire all weapons, 12" and fire 1 or 24" and fire none

walkers could move 6" and fire 2 weapons or stay stationary and fire all

 sfshilo wrote:
Can someone explain vehicle movement? Because looking at the 2nd ed sisters codex it looks hilariously over complicated compared to 8th.

I honestly don’t think anyone can.

You had three speeds. Slow, Combat and Fast. And yet another template.

Beyond that, no idea!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There was also daft little know rules. Like for ever put 12or 24 inch over the first, you knocked one off your penetration roll.

Who the hell knew that at the time?

I played three different armies in 2nd edition (I'm down to Chaos, my original, my only from now on though).

Dark Angels - Ravenwing bikers supported by Predators. Back then Ravenwing jink provided -1 to hit, movement provided penalties to hit based on how far you moved, cover provided penalties to hit as well. My attack bikes with Multi-Meltas would run up at max speed behind cover and be -5 to hit for my opponents. So glad you mentioned the grenades, I had totally forgotten the Blind grenade phase, it was critical to my DA predators, because you'd launch them out after firing to limit the return fire your tanks took, but they wandered, and honestly after about 3 tanks fire off Blind, it became it's own phase. Of course, you also had the two techmarines on bikes with Vortex grenades and Bionic Arms (+1 to hit with grenades) because Chaos Lords didn't die without Vortex in 2nd edition (more on that later).

Chaos Space Marines - Chaos Lord in Terminator Armour (which was a 2d6 save back then), Mark of Khorne and Tzeentch with a Displacer Field, Favor of Khorne (re-roll armor saves), Lightning Claw (S8, D3 damage, -5 save back then), and Combi-Flamer (lighting things on fire was important, because Eldar), Combat Drugs, usually tried for Teleport and the Quickening optimally, with Bolt of Change from Tzeentch (2d6 over T dead regardless of wounds), only Vortex killed him (except once, freakishly he died to a Shuriken Cannon). Sorcerer Terminator Lord, Inferno Bolts, Power Field, Warp Jump Generator, Daemon Weapon, Inferno Bolts back then bypassed armor and vehicle crew could be killed by it, so he'd teleport around, killing all the crew inside vehicles and leaving them derelict on the field, he'd usually go for Iron Arm to double his S/T, make him really hard to kill. Basically these two would run around the field and destroy everything. Oh Daemonic Possession on vehicles was insane back then, the Daemonically Possessed Rhino could only be killed on a penetrating hit of a 6 and you could put as many combi-bolters on it as you cared to model.

Orks - Pulsa Rokkits. Looted Hellhounds. Nobz in Powered Armour. This was easily the most broken army I played in 2nd edition, bar none. Knock opponents down with Pulsa Rokkits (literally rob them of a movement phase, auto-leg hits on walkers), light them on fire with flamers, shoot them with Nobz, thanks for playing.

Note: Flamer rules, if you got wounded by a Flamer, you were set on fire, being on fire meant you moved randomly until the flames went out (unless you had Frenzon) and did nothing else. Flames went out on a 1, on a 2-6 you rolled to wound them again and they ran around like idiots. Only Terminator armor allowed you to ignore this.

Oh gods I’d forgotten Setting Things On Fire.

The only downside to an IG opponent failing to kill stuff with a flame weapon was having to work out where all the by then burning dudes went. Random direction, random distance for all of them.

And when you’d torched yet failed to kill 10Guardsmen, life got dull!

Much as I loved that mechanic....just, no need for that level of detail. Just gimme a damage re-roll or leadership knacking debuff. Same effect more or less. Much less faffage!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh gods I’d forgotten Setting Things On Fire.

The only downside to an IG opponent failing to kill stuff with a flame weapon was having to work out where all the by then burning dudes went. Random direction, random distance for all of them.

And when you’d torched yet failed to kill 10Guardsmen, life got dull!

Much as I loved that mechanic....just, no need for that level of detail. Just gimme a damage re-roll or leadership knacking debuff. Same effect more or less. Much less faffage!

Agreed.

At the same time, few gaming experiences have ever lived up to the unadulterated joy of watching a Swooping Hawk Exarch run around on fire for an entire game. Mostly it was about setting skinnies on fire and watching them run around like idiots.

As for Pulsa Rokkits....

If memory serves, aiming and firing one was in the region of ‘roughly that way, hope for best’.

90% of the time Orky support weapons did naff all. But when they did what it said on the tin? Gods help your opponent!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh gods I’d forgotten Setting Things On Fire.

The only downside to an IG opponent failing to kill stuff with a flame weapon was having to work out where all the by then burning dudes went. Random direction, random distance for all of them.

And when you’d torched yet failed to kill 10Guardsmen, life got dull!

Much as I loved that mechanic....just, no need for that level of detail. Just gimme a damage re-roll or leadership knacking debuff. Same effect more or less. Much less faffage!

Agreed.

At the same time, few gaming experiences have ever lived up to the unadulterated joy of watching a Swooping Hawk Exarch run around on fire for an entire game. Mostly it was about setting skinnies on fire and watching them run around like idiots.

There was that, true. Definite abject joy inwatching anything even slightly hard flail about whilst on fire

Cheekiest thing I ever pulled off? Master of the Ravenwing in a Landspeeder. He was the pilot, pilot fired the Assault Cannon. Load that bad boy you with Armour Piercing Ammo, and watch *anything* evaporate in a deluge of ungodly firepower.

Could even fire the Assault Cannon once the Land Speeder had been shot down and stacked it.... caught more than a few foes out with that!

God I can't believe how good my memory of this is, Pulsa Rokkits had a variable fuse. You chose a number of d6s to get range, up to 12d6, the Rokkits themselves had a 2d6 inch blast radius. Typically, you were around 24-36 inches from your opponent and you didn't have to get that close, generally 7-10d6 range got you close enough that the 2d6 inch radius handled the rest. They were deadly reliable once you knew the numbers to use with them.

All infantry were knocked down and lost their movement phase the next round.
All vehicles took automatic leg/track hits.
If you rolled doubles on the radius the Rokkit pulsed again in the next turn.

They were absurdly broken.

Is it true that the Fight fase in the LotR SBG was based on 2nd edition 40K?

Not really.

2nd ed. was great, but more breakable than almost any edition. This was of little concern being in high school as none of our budgets would afford 20+ Wolf Guard terminators with assault cannons, etc.

I still play a modified version of 2nd, and it's excellent. We skip the majority of time-consuming stuff, but if you want an exceptionally narrative detailed Hollywood movie of a game? 2nd is right up your ally.

Also, believe it or not - despite all of the crazy rules it was much easier to play then today's game (simply because everyone abided by the same rules - most armies used similar weapons, and far fewer units had special rules of their own).

The biggest issues which sucked? A lengthy Psyker phase (something we've fixed), and close combat was very dynamic but uselessly complex for large units and became a nightmare - never intended really for th scale the game was growing to, even in 2nd ed..

If anyone is interested here is my blog for 2nd ed. --- lots of resources available:

http://projectanvil.blogspot.com/

Huzzah



Also parries, fumbles and crit hits. I literally re-weaponed my blood claws with all power/chain swords just for parries.

Also voltage fields on Nid creatures. Would short out any other inv save on a 4+. Lethal as hell.
Oh and Nids having 3 classes of creatures for shooting at, monsterous, normal and small.

２nd ed wasn't that bad if you left out grenade effects that stay. We still play 2nd ed and with that + sensible players it's still best 40k edition so far.

Sure it's not suitable rulewise for big battles but then again with rules allowing that ala current our 6'x4' board is way too small for big battles to make sense so that was less of an issue than one would think.

It was also edition that while characters were super killy yes they still could be controlled...Unless opponent was idiot or tried risking best they could really kill was 1-2 models a turn so any character without grunts to provide numbers struggled to kill more than 5 models in a game.

TL; DR

But you are forgetting a classic. Playing as Orks and having someone drop the virus bomb!

If that thing existed today conscript spam would be laughable in its scale of mediocrity!

Dammit - virus bomb was the first one you mentioned, doh!

Dont forget Librarians in termy armor with Iron arm, Quickening and Teleportation cast on them.
M4d6 Str10 T10 I10 8 attacks with a 3+ on 2d6 backed up by a 4+ inv. Throw in a sword for a parry and bye bye pretty much anything outside of a greater daemon/avatar in the game (Yes Avatars were actually amazing beatsticks back then!).

 Ratius wrote:
Dont forget Librarians in termy armor with Iron arm, Quickening and Teleportation cast on them.
M4d6 Str10 T10 I10 8 attacks with a 3+ on 2d6 backed up by a 4+ inv. Throw in a sword for a parry and bye bye pretty much anything outside of a greater daemon/avatar in the game (Yes Avatars were actually amazing beatsticks back then!).

Then opponent feeds him squad of orks or grots one at a time. Have fun smashing grunts one guy at a time

We stopped using expensive characters when we realized if enemy lacked expensive characters they struggled to make an impact. S10 A10(btw attacks after ~5 was more of disadvantage) WS10 isn't as hot when you still can't kill anything but what's on b2b and opponent obviously doesn't ram as much stuff into b2b as possible unless he feels he benefits from that(so either he's making misjudgement or by definition you don't WANT him to come in such numbers).

Worse than that was flying eldar exarch with missile launcher. Guns were bigger threat than sword.

Being unable to charge said greater daemon because it caused terror and you just couldn't pass your psychology test LOL

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
How do?

Many many moons ago, when I was young and you were younger, we all played 2nd Edition 40k. See Young Ones, there was pretty much bugger all else to play.

As fond as my memories were, the game was completely hatstand. You think 40k has balance issues now! Oh bless your cotton socks, you’ve no idea in that youthful mind of yours

Up to a certain point, specific armies could be utterly undone before the first turn started proper. Yep, I’m talking Virus Bomb. This was a card you played at the start of the battle. If you were in Power Armour, it did basically nothing at all to you. If not? Well. Might as well redeploy because it’s Next Game O’Clock! A card so notoriously crap and unbalanced, Andy Chambers apologised via White Dwarf and asked everyone to cut their copy up.

2nd Edition, where I typically spent more time working out what my various grenades did between turns that actually taking my turn (I’ll never forget a Master Librarian legging it away from a particularly dogged Vortex template in a near Benny Hill style). If you’d lobbed the unholy four (smoke, blind, plasma and Vortex) you had to make a roll for each grenade (not type mind you) to see what happened. And entire squads could throw them back then. Happy, but very, very silly days.

Another example? Hey kid? Ever seen 16 War Walkers taken out by a single Bolt Pistol? I have. Whole mob of them coming down one flank. They’d just cleared a bottleneck of terrain, so were inevitably bunched up tight. Single Blood Claw takes a crack, and kills a pilot (to be fair, they had a 2+ invulnerable save. They whiffed it). That sent the bipedal menace spiralling...right into two more. Collision damage took them out, and the rest fell like dominoes. Utterly cool, but also very, very silly.

One last example before I open the floor to others you ask! Well. I shall indulge you. Back then, any character could have Combat Drugs. Whilst not without risk, they turned your chosen benefactor into a raving psycho loony. Pop them on a Chief Librarian, and cast some choice powers? All but unstoppable. To the point they were also unfunny to face down. Which is why I regularly made judicious use of Vortex Grenades. Expensive, yes. But a ‘nope hole’ when you needed was worth the points!

Ok. Enough from me for now. What’re your memories of those crazy, hatstand halcyon days?

2nd threads are just the best threads on this forum. 2nd was by far the best edition conceived by the designers. Just imagine a 40K game without offenders like super-heavy vehicles, flyers and primarchs. Other boons were an interesting psychic phase like the magic phase in WHFB and a Hiding & Overwatch (full BS with some modifiers) mechanic. You basically had in most cases two characters (beatstick & psyker), two to four infantry squads, an APC, Dreadnought and a tank.

Virus Bomb (Virus Outbreak):
Virus Outbreak is a strategy card and the set encompasses 26 cards. Each player draws one card for each 1000 pts.of his army. Most games are played with 1500 pts. So the chance to get this card is quite slim.
Effects: Play this card at any time. Place a 2´´ blast template anywhere on the table and treat it as a Virus grenade template. The template remains in play for the remainder of the game.

Army special rules:
Tyranids: Opponent must remove the Virus Outbreak card from the deck at the start of the game.
Vaxxine Squig (wargear card; Painboys only; limited: 2 per army; 50 pts.): All Ork troops on this side are immune to the effects of any viruses (e.g.: Virus Grenade & Virus Outbreak).

The Virus Grenade is a wargear card (50 pts.) and is limited (2 per army). Only characters can equip wargear cards (e.g.: SM Sgt. 1 card, SM Cpt. 3 cards).
Effect: 2´´ blast radius, immediate. Models affected by the template had to roll, if they were affected.
The following models are immune:
SM, Eldar Aspect Warriors, Dreadnoughts, Terminators and enclosed vehicles.

All others have to roll a 1 or 2 to avoid the effects. Affected models are effectively slain - but are left on the battlefield. Lie affected models on their sides, and roll a D6 - this is the contact range for the virus in inches. Any normally vulnerable model within the contact range of a victim of the virus is slain on D6 roll 4+. Each time a model is slain by the effects of the virus, lay it on it´s side and roll for the contact range again. It is possible that a single model may have to test to see if it is slain several times because it lies within the contact range of more than one victim. Once there are no more victims within the contact range of all slain models, the virus has no further effects.

War Walker incident:
16 War Walkers? This is a lot even for a multi-player game. A War Walker costs 80 pts. without weapons. The usual loadout is lascannonen & scatter laser and then the unit costs a total of 150 pts. Anyway, are you sure there was a Space Wolf to blame? Sounds to me like an Ewok job.

Barbecue:
Roll a D6 for each model surviving a hit; on a 4+, that model catches fire. Models on fire must roll on the following chart at the beginning of each turn:
1-5: Another automatic hit. If the target survives, it will move randomly and is unable to do anything else this turn. Normal coherency rules are suspended for troops on fire.
6: Flames are put out.

Any model within 1´´ may attempt to beat out the flames (instead of shooting); roll aD6 - on 6+, the flames are put out. If more than one model is assigned to beat the flames, the roll is given a bonus of +1 for each additional model. The following models may choose to ignore the flames and continue to fighting as normal:
Vehicles, Dreadnoughts, Terminators, Frenzied troops and Tyranids.

Source: Battle Bible Version 1.5.1


Grenades with long lasting effects:
Yes, they are a pain in the ass. Common sense is required for both players to restrict their use.

2nd ed had too many games that ended before the other player got a turn.

 Strg Alt wrote:

2nd threads are just the best threads on this forum. 2nd was by far the best edition conceived by the designers. Just imagine a 40K game without offenders like super-heavy vehicles, flyers and primarchs. Other boons were an interesting psychic phase like the magic phase in WHFB and a Hiding & Overwatch (full BS with some modifiers) mechanic. You basically had in most cases two characters (beatstick & psyker), two to four infantry squads, an APC, Dreadnought and a tank.

Actually 2nd ed had super heavies. Pretty nasty firepower but while tougher than say leman russ still not THAT tough. You could with bit of luck oneshot baneblade with lascannon. Albeit preferably you would want more than one lascannon pointed at it or preferably bit beefier gun.

"2nd threads are just the best threads on this forum. 2nd was by far the best edition conceived by the designers. Just imagine a 40K game without offenders like super-heavy vehicles, flyers and primarchs. Other boons were an interesting psychic phase like the magic phase in WHFB and a Hiding & Overwatch (full BS with some modifiers) mechanic. You basically had in most cases two characters (beatstick & psyker), two to four infantry squads, an APC, Dreadnought and a tank. "

And it was still a white hot dumpster fire. 3rd ed was MUCH better.

2nd Edition had superheavies. I still have Inquisitor 16, with the rules for Baneblades, and the Armourcast Baneblade that went with.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
2nd Edition had superheavies. I still have Inquisitor 16, with the rules for Baneblades, and the Armourcast Baneblade that went with.

Spoiler:

Never saw a Baneblade for sale in 2nd. Is the shown model a scratchbuild?

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
2nd Edition had superheavies. I still have Inquisitor 16, with the rules for Baneblades, and the Armourcast Baneblade that went with.

Spoiler:

Never saw a Baneblade for sale in 2nd. Is the shown model a scratchbuild?

Nope! Armorcast produced them under license for GW for a long time. You can still get the old Armorcast Baneblades on Ebay sometimes. (e.g. here's one that comes with the parts to make it a Armorcast Shadowsword as well!)

I just sold my armorcast Baneblade and a friend of mine still has his shadowsword. Both from 2ed.

Another of my friends has a couple of tyranid super heavies from the same era as well. Haraspex and malefactor maybe?

Yeah, superheavies have been in "28mm" 40k from the get-go.

It's why I find all the hate surrounding them so staggering; people act like they are "intrusions into the game" as if they've never been, aha.

Yeah. But rulewise not that special. Couple leman russ would be providing about same in less eggs in one bucket that's not THAT much more survivable than russ. 2nd ed super heavies were basically just tanks with more guns. More akin step up from leman russ like land raider was step up from predator.

I have blown one several times already.

Really not much in 2nd ed single models that single lascannon COULDN'T take out with some luck. Nurgle daemon prince is pretty much only thing I recall that was 100% impossible to kill with single lascannon.

tneva82 wrote:
Yeah. But rulewise not that special. Couple leman russ would be providing about same in less eggs in one bucket that's not THAT much more survivable than russ. 2nd ed super heavies were basically just tanks with more guns. More akin step up from leman russ like land raider was step up from predator.

I have blown one several times already.

Yes, Baneblades have always had roughly the firepower of 3 tanks and durability of 3 tanks, while costing considerably more. They've never been very good until now - and now, it's almost exclusively due to the Steel Behemoth rule more than anything.

Primarchs? Space wolves had one in 2nd LOL
Although, I was never able to pick up the figure

http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/forumfiles/leman-russ-2nd-ed.jpg

kaotkbliss wrote:
Primarchs? Space wolves had one in 2nd LOL
Although, I was never able to pick up the figure

http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/forumfiles/leman-russ-2nd-ed.jpg

Do you have his profile?

I used to bring plasma missiles in every list once I discovered them. That took me a year as I wasn't very competent or competitive at it back then.
My friend used to send his warp spiders at my army, which was just starter box marines at best and kill most of them in then second turn. I read battle reports but knowing what a refused flank is had having a collection of models strong enough to use it effectively are two different things. haha. I started winning after I started collecting a Chaos space Marines army! So much fun they were! I did much better when I finally began collecting Imperial Guard. I think we had discovered a few other people that played about then.
I recall Space Marines as extremely unforgiving back then. But again my collection was pitiful.
Now days I easily know what I'd like to field for a game of second edition. I just don't know how many points that would translate into.
My best memory from back then. I was going to be moving from Washington State to Florida. My friends threw a 4 player tournament for our last get together. The Ork player rushed his Warboss on Boar up the side of the board, fixated on my Ratling Sniper hero, Who would take a shot at the Boss which plinked off his Displacer Field. Sending him off the board and out of play. Fantastic!
I remember the first time I managed to kill my friends Avatar, I saw a tear in his eye. lol.
Eldar were simply mean and nasty!
Ah, One time I had 10 Tactical marines manage to kill and Eversor Assassin It exploded and killed most of them.
I was just really really bad at 40K back then.

 Strg Alt wrote:

kaotkbliss wrote:
Primarchs? Space wolves had one in 2nd LOL
Although, I was never able to pick up the figure

http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/forumfiles/leman-russ-2nd-ed.jpg

Do you have his profile?

That I have never heard of existing and been trying. I suspect it was model that was made more fun and didn't have rules back then. Could be wrong though but I have never heard even hint of him having rules.

tneva82 wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

kaotkbliss wrote:
Primarchs? Space wolves had one in 2nd LOL
Although, I was never able to pick up the figure

http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/forumfiles/leman-russ-2nd-ed.jpg

Do you have his profile?

That I have never heard of existing and been trying. I suspect it was model that was made more fun and didn't have rules back then. Could be wrong though but I have never heard even hint of him having rules.

Leman Russ is not included in the 2nd Space Wolves Codex. There could have been rules for him in a WD or maybe in Rogue Trader.

Has anyone mentined the damage dice yet?
Ooooh the damage dice. You think weapon doing d6 damage is too random? How about a zoanthropes Warp Blast doing D10 damage and D12+D10+D6+7 armor penetration?

Genestealer are bad now? How about when they were WS7 S6 A4 basic?

They also use to have specific rules interactions with various weapons. For example flamers could set them on fire but the will of the hive mind stopped them from panicing and allowed them to act normally. They were immune to needle weapons and shrieker shurikens but especially vulnerable to hellfire bolter shells.

They were also immume to choke, halluconigen, scare, toxin and virus grenades.

I think the big difference for Super Heavies and such in 2nd edition was that they weren't allowed in most tournament or store leagues. I know in our game store leagues we only allowed official GW units. It wasn't until 6th or 7th edition I think that GW finally made the FW stuff official.

Eldar were the devil in 2nd edition. Mostly because of various flavors of Swooping Hawk Exarchs.

Also, I'm not sure what game some of you were playing, but in my Chaos army, the Chaos Lord and the Sorcerer Lord were primary threats, they were basically unstoppable without vortex. I don't even remember what people shot at in my army outside the two of them, they were everywhere doing everything.

Tyranids were really nasty in 2nd, Voltage fields, Genestealers were specifically balanced around their ability to kill Terminators, they were ugly.

Being a narrative player at heart, an RPG-er in my youth (as early as maybe 9-10 years old, my buddy's older brothers would run RPGs with us, etc.) 2nd ed. 40K was all about story and mayhem. Seeing the game gutted in 3rd edition and becoming a pale shell of its former self was really saddening. Easier? Sure. Better for tournaments? Absolutely. But the soul of the game was gone.

-The expanded and widely diverse stat line meant that more things were incredible hero-hammer and it made it feel much more like the fluff. This may have hurt the game in a competitive sense, but watching an assassin fight a Greater Daemon or Avatar to a standstill over 5-6 turns was crazy.

-Vastly more in depth rules allowed for much more of a "do what you want" approach to the game. Want to leap off a moving vehicle without it stopping? Go for it, there's a table for that. Want to suicidally ram your marine biker into a Hive Tyrant and hope you hurt it? Cool, got rules for it. Want to do a drift on your bike and try to carry out a passing attack? Go for it. Guns damaged and your tank's immobilized? Grab your laspistol, leave the tank and start fighting. How many people remember running a single surviving crew around in a tank, trying to man a different gun as needed? Did a vehicle blow up? Hope it doesn't explode and flip over on things nearby. Playing Orks? Good luck. Oh your opponent has daemons and you just teleported your Warp Spiders? Hope one of them isn't a plaguebearer by the time they re-appear.

The Rogue Trader almost-RPG nature was still hanging around heavily in 2nd. Almost anything you wanted to try, could be done somehow. This made up for the disaster which was grenades, psychic phase, etc. Flamers setting stuff on fire, vortex grenades drifting around the battlefield, units being able to actually hide, etc. There were a lot of hidden rules people often forgot - the degradation of armour penetration over distance - the ability to shoot special weapons in close combat against a vehicle, etc.

It was a totally different game. Violent and at the same time, not nearly as violent as modern 40K. Meaning something like an Imperial Guard squad wasn't chaff to be wiped out on a whim. Still weak, sure...but you could plan on units actually having a real role or purpose in the game.

All of this made it terrible if you played with dickheads or cheesy gamers. If you didn't? (and if you didn't live in Martel's world where everything is horrible all the time and nothing is good - a realm of blighted darkness and foul things) You could have a hell of a time. A much more involved and story-writing game than the current game and anything since.

@Twinpole- The models I was talking about weren't FW they were armorcast (licensed from GW). The reason you probably didn't see them at events was that they were pretty rare.To be honest I doubt that armorcast made more than a couple thousand of each of the superheavy models (maybe not even that many) and they weren't that cheap in relation to normal options both point wise and $ wise.
By the time 3rd came around I'm pretty sure that both armorcast and epiccast were no longer allowed to manufacture superheavies so they went OOP.

Yeah, in 3rd Forge World (as an internal company of Games Workshop) began to produce the models and rules for Baneblades (I still have my floppy Imperial Armour Volume 1 from that era!).

They have always been as legal as anything else, which is to say "ask nicely first."

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
Also, I'm not sure what game some of you were playing, but in my Chaos army, the Chaos Lord and the Sorcerer Lord were primary threats, they were basically unstoppable without vortex. I don't even remember what people shot at in my army outside the two of them, they were everywhere doing everything.

Those were nasty yes but chaos lord could really hope to kill like 6 models in the course of game. 4 turn game, 8 h2h phases. Even if you could make turn 1 charge(how?) that's 8 combat phases. More realistically you are looking at 5-6 combat phases tops. Enemy spreads out, you get 1, MAYBE 2 model in b2b. That's 1, MAYBE 2 deaths. Next combat phase repeat. 1, maybe 2(obvious requirement being YOU move model first).

Okay shooting might kill more but if you are alone you will be in close combat forever for all intents and purposes.

Ditto for sorcerer. Though at least sorcerer has psychic powers to help with.

To get through even 20 orks it will take basically entire game for the 2 tag teamed and still not enough if orks don't botch LD(with general and maybe BSB reroll...).

Basically we have found cheaper heroes and more grunts to be more viable as you need lots of models to bring down lots of models hurriedly and really there's not much difference between bog standard terminator and chaos lord when it comes down to taking down basic guys.

Sure you weren't going to kill those characters easily but they aren't earning their points killing grunt or two at a time...And if you don't have much other than grunts for them to deal with...

So if character couldn't munch through tank he had trouble earning himself. Tanks are about only expensive lone models we reliably use. And characters are efficient only at killing expensive lone models.

I remember spent nearly 1 hour solving a single Splatta Cannon once.

The goddamn thing keep twisting and twsiting flying around the battlefield... and my opponent had 3 of those to fire.

tneva82 wrote:
Those were nasty yes but chaos lord could really hope to kill like 6 models in the course of game. 4 turn game, 8 h2h phases. Even if you could make turn 1 charge(how?)

Chaos Lords could have multiple marks, usually, mine was Khorne/Tzeentch, I usually drew second from the psychic powers deck for him, so that my Sorcerer Lord would clear out some of the specifics I didn't want and would insure he got Teleport and the Quickening. First turn charge was common. Also, the Chaos Lord with the Mark of Khorne had an absurd number of attacks (especially with the Quickening). Also, the Lightning Claw shredded vehicles, he could kill any character in the game in HtH, he was an amazing whirling dervish of death. With teleport he was all over my opponent's back line hitting whatever he needed to hit.

Sorcerer Lord had Warp Jump Generator, so he basically went wherever he wanted on the board. Inferno Bolts versus vehicles and beat troops was murder. Especially against anything T3, like Guard, Eldar, he was just coring out vehicles and leaving them without crew. He didn't engage in HtH too much, but vehicles just had their crews erased. He was in Terminator armour using the combi-bolter to fire Inferno Bolts, so he'd get 2 template per shot IIRC.

Mobility was critical, occasionally I'd get a game where the Chaos Lord didn't pull Teleport, and I was sad, but most of the time you could manipulate the deck to get what you needed.

 Strg Alt wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

kaotkbliss wrote:
Primarchs? Space wolves had one in 2nd LOL
Although, I was never able to pick up the figure

http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/forumfiles/leman-russ-2nd-ed.jpg

Do you have his profile?

That I have never heard of existing and been trying. I suspect it was model that was made more fun and didn't have rules back then. Could be wrong though but I have never heard even hint of him having rules.

Leman Russ is not included in the 2nd Space Wolves Codex. There could have been rules for him in a WD or maybe in Rogue Trader.

Yeah, the rules weren't in the codex but I do remember seeing them somewhere. I think it was in a WD issue but can't seem to find which one

We still play as many of my friends refuse to play post 3rd.

I love 8th but our 2nd edtion games are a blast.

ShadowSword, Baneblade, Stormblade Tempest super heavies. Warhound and Revenant scout titans. Destroyer Knight Titan, Phantom and Reaver titans and lots more. The Mega Ork Gargant was like 18" tall and 20" or more round!!!!!

They did restrict you to 25% of your armies cost could not exceed the Lords of War stuff. So that kept things like all Super Heavy list from dominating.

Chaos super characters with 2+ rerolls on 2d6 terminator saves with 3+ Displacer Saves and some psychic/chaos shenanigans meant that it took like 120 to 150 lascannon shots to kill some of those characters on average.

chaos would take a unit of orks with Pulsa rokkets and boom you were hurting.

I remember 2 lovely events. One was when my Revenant Scout Titan Reactor overloaded and made a 24" diameter Vortex explosion that destroyed everything inside.

The other was an ork nobz unit inside a thunderhawk gunship...cant remember but it was 2 vs our 3 chaos armies.

Pulsa rockets knocked all our super character to the ground. The Thunderhawk laid like a 36" mega blast of grenades and then landed...the ork nobz jumped out killed everyone but a couple nurgle marines and 1 super khorne character. That was like 50 of our guys dead and next turn they jumped back in and 'dusted off' and the rest of their army was free to shoot us like ducks. OUCH.

exploding vehicles....models getting moved outside of blast templates and falling off cliffs/roottops, Vehicles with no guns ramming other vehicles or running down troops to win the game.....Things and flavor that you can never get out of 3rd+

One player said it seems in new 40K the actual miniature doesn't mean much to the game as all the intricate rules for 2nd ed...."it is a miniature game right...so why don't the miniatures matter much"

I tend to agree..strategems are fun but it seems more of a power combo card game now than the old fashioned miniature game it used to be.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Those were nasty yes but chaos lord could really hope to kill like 6 models in the course of game. 4 turn game, 8 h2h phases. Even if you could make turn 1 charge(how?)

Chaos Lords could have multiple marks, usually, mine was Khorne/Tzeentch, I usually drew second from the psychic powers deck for him, so that my Sorcerer Lord would clear out some of the specifics I didn't want and would insure he got Teleport and the Quickening. First turn charge was common. Also, the Chaos Lord with the Mark of Khorne had an absurd number of attacks (especially with the Quickening). Also, the Lightning Claw shredded vehicles, he could kill any character in the game in HtH, he was an amazing whirling dervish of death. With teleport he was all over my opponent's back line hitting whatever he needed to hit.

Sorcerer Lord had Warp Jump Generator, so he basically went wherever he wanted on the board. Inferno Bolts versus vehicles and beat troops was murder. Especially against anything T3, like Guard, Eldar, he was just coring out vehicles and leaving them without crew. He didn't engage in HtH too much, but vehicles just had their crews erased. He was in Terminator armour using the combi-bolter to fire Inferno Bolts, so he'd get 2 template per shot IIRC.

Mobility was critical, occasionally I'd get a game where the Chaos Lord didn't pull Teleport, and I was sad, but most of the time you could manipulate the deck to get what you needed.

Yes well Let's say 1st turn charge and you go first. That's still just 8 combat phase. With some luck like 10-12 models in b2b contact over the game. So that's 10-12 models dead MAX. One combat phase less if opponent gets first turn.

And attacks after ~5 was irrelevant. Once you rolled that 6 that was good enough. After that all criticals are countered by fumbbles. Actually if opponent made fumble's be 2 it was worse so theoretically if you had enough attacks you reached point where you lose to a grot in average...Though albeit nobody had that much attacks.

What more attacks did was at most make it swingy resulting in very good results(you rolled lots of 6's) or very bad(lots of 1's) but even this was actually BAD for characters as they didn't NEED to roll tons against most stuff to beat. So generally 3-4 attacks was the sweet spot.

And yes they would kill any character in the game.

What happens when rather than characters you have tons of grunts against you? Keep in mind it's IMPOSSIBLE for you to kill more than 2 in close combat and even that requires some luck/mistake from opponent or him feeling it's worth the risk. Which means either he miscalculated(it wasn't worth it) or it was good for him and if it's good for him by definition it's bad for you because he's coming with something that is actually then going to beat you in average.

Characters were sure nasty. As long as they had single expensive models to deal with. What happens when you remove those from army facing your terminator lord? You spend your time killing basic grunts. Mark of khorne doubling attacks is irrelelevant. Single chaos terminator would be effectively just as killy but hell of a lot cheaper allowing you to bring more models thus engaging more models.

tneva82 wrote:
What happens when rather than characters you have tons of grunts against you? Keep in mind it's IMPOSSIBLE for you to kill more than 2 in close combat and even that requires some luck/mistake from opponent or him feeling it's worth the risk. Which means either he miscalculated(it wasn't worth it) or it was good for him and if it's good for him by definition it's bad for you because he's coming with something that is actually then going to beat you in average.

Characters were sure nasty. As long as they had single expensive models to deal with. What happens when you remove those from army facing your terminator lord? You spend your time killing basic grunts. Mark of khorne doubling attacks is irrelelevant. Single chaos terminator would be effectively just as killy but hell of a lot cheaper allowing you to bring more models thus engaging more models.

I don't recall getting locked into HtH in 2nd edition, but it was long time ago, I do recall them getting around to do a lot of work. But you're probably correct, I mostly remember him destroying the major threats on the board.

Besides, against hordes, I had Daemonically possessed Rhinos with as many combi-bolters as I could put on them and they were virtually unkillable. He usually didn't have to deal with hordes.

There were no hordes in 2nd ed.

Whirlwinds, plasma missles and Basilisks made hordes a horrible choice.

Earthshaker cannons auto penetrated and fired twice each with a 2" blast.....kills most charactes and most vehicles and definitely most hordes.

Tyranids had a lot of units but their shootin sucked.
Orcs could field 200 gretchin but their shooting sucked too.

Shooting and super characters ruled 2nd ed.

3rd edition brought balance to the game but cut way too much of the fun of the game out to clean the cheese.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

I don't recall getting locked into HtH in 2nd edition, but it was long time ago, I do recall them getting around to do a lot of work. But you're probably correct, I mostly remember him destroying the major threats on the board.

Besides, against hordes, I had Daemonically possessed Rhinos with as many combi-bolters as I could put on them and they were virtually unkillable. He usually didn't have to deal with hordes.

If you get into combat with say 10 orks without any help you were there for like MINIMUM 5 combat phases(=2.5 turns out of 4 turn games). You can't kill anything that you are not in b2b. Enemy has no requirement to bring models into b2b. That means when he moves models in conbat first he moves one model into combat and keeps shooting with rest. You move and you hope to get more than 1 model into b2b contact.

You smash that one for good. Repeat.

There just isn't enough game turns to go through units on your own. Even against mere TEN grunts. 10 orks is pretty darn cheap squad. And you don't need super killy character to kill an ork. Terminator with any weapon basically does that for lot cheaper.

It's basically same principle as 8th ed conscript/ork boy swarm has. Enemy simply lacks attacks to kill them all. Except there's added bonus that all those attacks on character are basically USELESS. In 8th ed character with 10 attacks can kill 10 models in h2h if there is 10 models in the unit. In 2nd ed those 10 attacks can be more of liability as you are never ever EVER going to kill more models than in b2b contact(of which rules don't force you to maximize) and actually hinders as that increases the odds of you rolling spectacularly bad 8 1's thus negating your high WS and actually losing the combat(has happened to me...Bloody hell getting my character beaten by stinking tactical marine on 1-1 combat That was rather embarrassing! And by beaten I mean KILLED! Losing combat bad enough but then having audacity of getting actually killed by resulting hits...URGH).

Can characters be good? Well yes obviously. It's just there's such a nice hard counter of removing expensive high profile targets coupled with cheap vortex grenade carried by some cheap unit champion for added proof that we went toward more bodies direction.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 admironheart wrote:
There were no hordes in 2nd ed.

Whirlwinds, plasma missles and Basilisks made hordes a horrible choice.

Earthshaker cannons auto penetrated and fired twice each with a 2" blast.....kills most charactes and most vehicles and definitely most hordes.

And kills elite infantry the same. And good spacing helps nicely. 2" blast is nice but maxed out dispersion helps a lot. Remember army sizes are smalled in 2nd ed so that even term horde doesn't mean you are all bunched up. That shoulder to shoulder clumping happened from 3rd ed onward and even more specifically 6th ed onward as model counts went up to roof. 2nd ed even horde army could easily disperse. You would need to make hell of a mistake to bunch up against template weapons.

Lets not forget 2nd ed Eldar d-cannons ( or distortion cannons to give em the full name) Utterly bonkers damage chart that could rematerialise your target 10 feet underground causing a sort of matter/anti-matter thermonuclear detonation.... i still to this day remember landing a predator ON TOP OF a land raider (yes you could teleport stuff up as well as down) . Treating the resultant mess as a vehicle ram, the land raider was unharmed but the predator was immobile..net result...landraider now has effectively three more sponson weapons.......

Or how about the freakishly powerful warp spiders... i shoot you, i roll a die.. if i roll higher than your initiative...you are dead...yes dead regardless of wounds....but.. i get +1 to my total for every other one that has hit you this turn that you have managed to survive... on a weapon with A HEAVY FLAMER TEMPLATE!!!!!!!

Come to think of it, the 2nd ed eldar book was truly truly horrifically powerful..(Jain zar being able to decimate armies with her spiky boomerang thingy is another one I,ve just remembered)

Fun yes....hilarious certainly...balanced IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER

kaotkbliss wrote:
Primarchs? Space wolves had one in 2nd LOL
Although, I was never able to pick up the figure

http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/forumfiles/leman-russ-2nd-ed.jpg

This model pre-dates 2nd edition. It is also not a Primarch, there weren't Primarchs yet. Yes, it is still Leman Russ. He was just some generic captain in the Space Wolves.

princeyg wrote:
Lets not forget 2nd ed Eldar d-cannons ( or distortion cannons to give em the full name) Utterly bonkers damage chart that could rematerialise your target 10 feet underground causing a sort of matter/anti-matter thermonuclear detonation.... i still to this day remember landing a predator ON TOP OF a land raider (yes you could teleport stuff up as well as down) . Treating the resultant mess as a vehicle ram, the land raider was unharmed but the predator was immobile..net result...landraider now has effectively three more sponson weapons.......

Wait. Does that mean with enough vehicles and enough time, you could use D-Cannons to assemble a Metal Box Voltron?

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
@Twinpole- The models I was talking about weren't FW they were armorcast (licensed from GW). The reason you probably didn't see them at events was that they were pretty rare.To be honest I doubt that armorcast made more than a couple thousand of each of the superheavy models (maybe not even that many) and they weren't that cheap in relation to normal options both point wise and $ wise.
By the time 3rd came around I'm pretty sure that both armorcast and epiccast were no longer allowed to manufacture superheavies so they went OOP.

I have the old Armorcast tanks - one Baneblade and one Shadowsword. Shortly after I got mine, they made a kit that could be swapped out as either. There was a minimum points threshhold where they could be used - I think it 2,000 points. As for the tanks themselves, I seem to remember buying them for about $55 each - and they came with their own datafax, so you didn't need the White Dwarf or IA book the stats came from.

Also, I may be misremembering as a 1E thing, but you could have your vehicle crew disembark to fight on foot. Nothing like popping a rhino to have the driver and gunner get out and shoot you back - I remember equipping them with Rocket launchers or other heavy weapons to get revenge.

And there's nothing like knocking out a superheavy to have a veteran infantry squad pop out (a Baneblade has a crew of 10) to chase down whatever knocked the tank out in the first place.

any crew in 2nd edition could get out and shoot with their pistols. The rules stated that they must remain within either 3" or 6" I think of their tank.

The last game that happened the tank had no weapons...not even a bolter so the driver kept on ramming the Exocrine while the gunner jumped out to shoot from behind. Lets say the gunner didn't last long.

Some guys came over and wanted to play against us with their armorcast Reaver Titan. I don't remember the rest of their army because it doesn't matter.

The only thing that does matter is the Eldar Exarch with a holo-field and Dodge(?) on a jetbike that makes a bee-line for the Titan. The titan gets some shots off, and the Exarch plus Bike, plus speed, plus overwatch (or something) makes it a -6 to hit the thing.

One shot goes through, easily penetrates the armor and. . Nope! Ablative Armor was on the bike, so no effect.

Exarch gets through and completes his charge to the Titan. Easily wins the combat and "Disarms" the Reaver with his second Exarch power. Goodbye Plasma Destructor or whatever it was.

Middle fingers were had.

 admironheart wrote:
We still play as many of my friends refuse to play post 3rd.

I love 8th but our 2nd edtion games are a blast.

ShadowSword, Baneblade, Stormblade Tempest super heavies. Warhound and Revenant scout titans. Destroyer Knight Titan, Phantom and Reaver titans and lots more. The Mega Ork Gargant was like 18" tall and 20" or more round!!!!!

They did restrict you to 25% of your armies cost could not exceed the Lords of War stuff. So that kept things like all Super Heavy list from dominating.

Chaos super characters with 2+ rerolls on 2d6 terminator saves with 3+ Displacer Saves and some psychic/chaos shenanigans meant that it took like 120 to 150 lascannon shots to kill some of those characters on average.

chaos would take a unit of orks with Pulsa rokkets and boom you were hurting.

I remember 2 lovely events. One was when my Revenant Scout Titan Reactor overloaded and made a 24" diameter Vortex explosion that destroyed everything inside.

The other was an ork nobz unit inside a thunderhawk gunship...cant remember but it was 2 vs our 3 chaos armies.

Pulsa rockets knocked all our super character to the ground. The Thunderhawk laid like a 36" mega blast of grenades and then landed...the ork nobz jumped out killed everyone but a couple nurgle marines and 1 super khorne character. That was like 50 of our guys dead and next turn they jumped back in and 'dusted off' and the rest of their army was free to shoot us like ducks. OUCH.

exploding vehicles....models getting moved outside of blast templates and falling off cliffs/roottops, Vehicles with no guns ramming other vehicles or running down troops to win the game.....Things and flavor that you can never get out of 3rd+

One player said it seems in new 40K the actual miniature doesn't mean much to the game as all the intricate rules for 2nd ed...."it is a miniature game right...so why don't the miniatures matter much"

I tend to agree..strategems are fun but it seems more of a power combo card game now than the old fashioned miniature game it used to be.

Is the Mega Gargant still a thing or did it disappear after 2nd?

take those warp spiders against 2e chaos and watch them get possessed and replaced by daemons every time they attempt a warp jump. certainly made marines think twice about deep striking as well

kaotkbliss wrote:

Is the Mega Gargant still a thing or did it disappear after 2nd?

GW pulled all the copyrights from Armorcast and Epicast. They had a few months to continue production and they made tons of boxed items. Then they had to sell those pieces by a certain date and then only 3rd party market had them. After I quit 3rd ed I remember seeing the $150 Phantom go over $500 on ebay for new and $80 War hounds s and $150 Reavers were well over 700 apiece for a while. Even the old Wave Serpent sold for $200 on average when you could find one.

Only a guy from Norway had the DeathStalker, DoomWeaver and Wave Serpent collection at the same time...some of those models were never to be seen on ebay.

for a good read check out the history:

http://www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Resin_Vehicles_%26_Titans

I grew up on 2nd edition 40k so it is my favourite way of playing the game, I admit if you went deep, with unbalanced armies designed only with a desire to win then the game didn't hold up. However for story telling and fun using balanced fair armies the game is great.

Not so keen on nightmare encounters like an Lvl 4 Mastery Inquisitor Lord in termie armour with Psycannon, combat drugs and other wargear, which wrecked my normal ork army without breaking too much of a sweat.

Was keen on the bizarre army creations a chaos army could field with World Eaters, cultists and minotaurs armed with boltguns running about, the sheer amount of options an army could have and the fact apart from the above mentioned uber charcters everything had a weakness.

One highlight (which I believe now isn't possible according to the battle bible rules, but perfectly acceptable with the original rules) was getting the special issue strategy card and pulling Jain Zar's "Silent Death" boomerang as an Ork Player. Giving this to an Ork Freebooter Kaptain 'Boomerang' and have him wandering around mowing down guardsmen with his squad acting as his own personal orky shield was a great moment.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Another example? Hey kid? Ever seen 16 War Walkers taken out by a single Bolt Pistol? I have. Whole mob of them coming down one flank. They’d just cleared a bottleneck of terrain, so were inevitably bunched up tight. Single Blood Claw takes a crack, and kills a pilot (to be fair, they had a 2+ invulnerable save. They whiffed it). That sent the bipedal menace spiralling...right into two more. Collision damage took them out, and the rest fell like dominoes. Utterly cool, but also very, very silly.

That sounds like fun, out of control vehicles crashing and creating memorable events were always a highlight of 2nd Edition 40k. I usually associate it with ork warbikes not the generally reliable Eldar and certainly not the war walkers who had that wonderful 2+ save.

Didn't something similar happen with Thunderhawk Gunships?
GW scratchbuilt one for Games Day or something like that and it was so popular another company made a few of them, then stopped but I think now Forgeworld is making them, or did so pretty recently.

2nd Ed was really cool and going back through old WD mags looking for rules really brought back some memories.

The sad part is, issues I've read could easily have been fixed. Such as creating static gunlines with smoke launchers. (units would throw smoke grenades then wait for the opponent to get tired of waiting and charge through the smoke to get to the units on the other side.

Easily fixed by
1, letting units shoot through the smoke at -1 to hit and
2, Instead of random movement after the first turn, just have it last 1 turn, then dissapear

2nd is where I got my start as a teen. However looking back it was a broken complex mess of a game. It was like half an role playing game with the detail it got into, and half a standard miniature game. It also used more than D6 dice, but D10, D12, D10, D4 etc. If every player was on the same page with list building, you did not use some of the worst wargear, and you did not use some of the most complex unnecessary rules (like set on fire, or everyone throwing a grenade) only then was is a pretty decent game. But quite frankly, even in my group of just friends playing (not random opponents at game shops) it was hard for everyone to be on the same page, especially my one friend with his Eldar. Ultimately I think the game is much better now than then.

Yeah, we only used the basic rules when we played back in the early to mid 90s. The game was a blast and moved along at a pretty normal pace

I ended up setting up a 4x4 table in my bedroom dedicated to the hobby. (scenery making, model painting, small games, etc.)

It was 1 of 4 pieces of furniture there. A bed, a dresser, the table and a shelf to hold all my Warhammer stuff I wasn't working on.

I played Orcs

A few highlights from the good ol' bad days:

Eldar mudstomping every army out there for like 6 months straight until one of my buddies got his hands on like 5 Space Wolf Terminators with cyclone missile launchers. He gets first turn and proceeds to completely wipe out the Eldar army in one turn of shooting. The Eldar player cried.

Ork Kommandos getting into a WWI style grenade throwing contest in a trench line with some Chaos Terminators. The mission was to take the highest point on the battlefield and after chucking about 80 grenades they cleared the way to a watchtower to win the game.

The best assault unit I can ever remember facing was a few Ogryns in a Chimera. Somehow they got off like a 35" charge and proceeded to dismantle my all guns, no choppas Ork army.

A five or six turn game where not a single model moved or fired a weapon. If you put your guys into overwatch they fired in the opponent's movement phase. My friend put his entire army in overwatch because he was waiting for me to come to him so in response I put my entire army into overwatch. This continued back and forth until the game ended.

The transport capacity of an ork battlewagon. It could hold as many models as you could physically pile on top, but if during the course of the game anyone fell off they were dead. This resulted in near fistfights as my opponent kept bumping the table to knock guys off.

Come to think of it, most of our games ended in near fistfights. Miraculously, I'm still friends with all those guys 20 years later...

Anyone remember the Nid pregame stratagem unit charts?
You'd roll a d6 for every squad, character and vehicle your opponent had with various effects kicking in. Some of them enough to really cripple your opponent before the game kicked off

Oh and yeah multiple batteries of Pulsa rockets were absolute game winners.

IandI wrote:
A five or six turn game where not a single model moved or fired a weapon. If you put your guys into overwatch they fired in the opponent's movement phase. My friend put his entire army in overwatch because he was waiting for me to come to him so in response I put my entire army into overwatch. This continued back and forth until the game ended.

Neat trick seeing standard game length was shorter than that.

But guess not much in terms of terrain there either. Enough terrain + scenario that means sitting on home=lose=that issue sorts out. You sit there, maybe blow something but enemy moves into objective and bang you lose.

Despite drawing our psychic powers at random me and my regular opponent cheated each other to death and always got teleport and vortex, pretty much ensuring carnage.
Additionally we'd always give our special characters extra wargear making them nigh on unkillable killing machines.
Troops were just chaff, usually not moving and sitting on overwatch waiting for something else to move (we both played marines)
It's strange thinking back on how I used to play that the game still holds any appeal

 DarknessEternal wrote:

kaotkbliss wrote:
Primarchs? Space wolves had one in 2nd LOL
Although, I was never able to pick up the figure

http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/forumfiles/leman-russ-2nd-ed.jpg

This model pre-dates 2nd edition. It is also not a Primarch, there weren't Primarchs yet. Yes, it is still Leman Russ. He was just some generic captain in the Space Wolves.

We’ve had this discussion before. That model is based on the Jes Goodwin artwork and accompanying flavour text from WD 127 (I think) - by which point he was most definitely a Primarch.

He never had official stats in any edition.

See if you can find the first 2nd edition battle report; that has an army of fewer than 30 Marines against an Ork army which had no squads greater than ten models. That’s what 2nd edition is designed to cope with.

I still want to give 2nd ed a go, just so I can experience its insanity. What's a good way to drum up enthusiasm for this?

As people have said my memory of 2nd wad that it was really characterful but got progressively worse as our group optimised our lists. By the end it was just stupid. As Eldar or Tyranids I felt I had to really try not to curbstomp people. Marines versus Orks was okay.

On the vortex spell card the front was different to the other spell cards. It had an additional star near the top title. I had a mate who always seemed to get vortex, for his librarian biker with vortex grenade.

I once faced 20 Wolfguard terminators with assault cannons, different friend than above. He shot at my BA terminators. I lost 2 terminators, he lost 7 (triple jams).

I once had yet another mate, who after my Dreadnought slaughtered his bike squad with my assault cannon, had one bike career out of control into my dreadnought. He damaged my assault cannon which set off a secondary explosion that blew up my dreadnought.

If we're talking now about "weird edge cases in 2nd edition 40k", then ...

The first time I fielded my scratch-built baneblade - it got destroyed in turn 2 by a glancing hit from a wraithguard.

Fielding a squadron of three Land Raiders. The first one got hit by a D-cannon, and teleported backwards and underground - the resulting explosion blew up the second one.

Ragnar Blackmane is locked in combat with an Eldar Farseer, when a vortex scatters onto them. Ragnar passes his 4+ dodge and escapes, the Farseer ... doesn't.

(possibly in the same game) my Iron Priest used the Special Issue strategy card in a game vs Eldar, and ended up with a Firepike.

Space Wolves scouts (back then, Space Wolves Scouts were rookies like everyone else's) holding off Deathwing terminators for several turns with shotguns; each turn, the Deathwing advanced over the hill , only to be fired upon by the Scouts with shotguns, which knocked the Terminators down, behind the ridge line.

Finding out that the then-new plastic Eldar Guardian jetbikes just fitted under the levels of the Necromunda card terrain (with a millimetre or so to spare).

Vehicle movement was simple, BTW. A vehicle had three speeds - Slow, Combat or Fast. You can change speed by one band per turn (so on turn 1 if you're at Slow speed, in turn 2 you can come to a halt or acceleratge to Combat speed). At slow speed you can make as many turns as you like. At Combat speed, 2 45degree turns. At Fast speed, one 45degree turn. That's what the template was for, but no-one used it.That's all, other than special rules for motive types (skimmers ignore obstacles, tracked vehicles can move over obstacles at slow speed, wheeled vehicles can't enter woods) and how to work out collisions, rams and boarding/leaving a moving vehicle.

It's no more or less insane than any subsequent edition. Just remember that Rogue Trader is basically a squad-level game, 2nd edition is a platoon-level game and subsequent editions are company-level games, and you should understand why they abstract things differently.

 Elbows wrote:
Not really.

2nd ed. was great, but more breakable than almost any edition. This was of little concern being in high school as none of our budgets would afford 20+ Wolf Guard terminators with assault cannons, etc.

I still play a modified version of 2nd, and it's excellent. We skip the majority of time-consuming stuff, but if you want an exceptionally narrative detailed Hollywood movie of a game? 2nd is right up your ally.

Also, believe it or not - despite all of the crazy rules it was much easier to play then today's game (simply because everyone abided by the same rules - most armies used similar weapons, and far fewer units had special rules of their own).

The biggest issues which sucked? A lengthy Psyker phase (something we've fixed), and close combat was very dynamic but uselessly complex for large units and became a nightmare - never intended really for th scale the game was growing to, even in 2nd ed..

If anyone is interested here is my blog for 2nd ed. --- lots of resources available:

http://projectanvil.blogspot.com/

Gonna check that out!

2nd ed was built for RPG minded players with smaller collections.
Nobody liked the guy with 30 dark reapers.
Yeah, some things were badly thought out, but these could be ignored/removed.

Basically, if you had played Traveler, and brought the mindset that your models represented actual characters,
then you were less likely to use combat drugs and so on, because they 1) didn't necessarily suit the character and 2) had potential to damage said character.
This sort of thinking was reinforced with Necromunda, and I had always hoped that GW would release 40k with similar rules adding to the sense of narrative and history that each model represented.
However, GW went the route of plastic-model-pusher rather than games designer/world creator, and dropped the ball on most everything redeeming about the original games imho,
ending up with a bad massed battle game.

There is a recent thread in dakka discussions re skirmish format games.
IMHO, some of this movement is due to the failure of GW to incorporate the rpg elements that make (some) skirmish games also appealing to some of us into 40k generally.
And, I stand by the claim held now 25years or so, that if GW did deliver these rpg elements into the 40k system, they would have a big winner on their hands.
SWA is testimony to that, for example.
But, such would maybe run contrary to their current style, monopose unique character models and even troops that require either difficult conversions for basic weapons swaps or the purchase of another, special model...

Anyways, 2nd ed was all about this potential, for a model collection to embody a history of its own on the tabletop, and this was made explicit in original Necromunda for example, but such a sensibility has since been I suppose lost to people raised on CCGs and "You died! Play again?" video games.
Maybe it will come back?
I hope so...

I never played 2nd ed, but I did play a lot of Necromunda. The original Necromunda rules were pretty much the same as 2nd ed 40k rules, with the same templates and grenade rules and everything. With small gangs of ~5 models, the rules really did work great.
They were updated a few years back though, but it was mostly minor fixes, like not relying on odd OOP dice or templates any more. The 2" blast and hand flamer templates at my old local club were falling apart near the end...

I started 40k earlt in 3rd, and the first Leman Russ tanks I bought actually came with a 2nd ed vehicle data sheet. I remember being really fascinated with how realistic they seemed, with different armor values and damage tables for hull, turret and tracks.

I guess this "model" is still legal since it's an official GW product.
I dare someone to field an Orc army filled with these at the LVO.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:

kaotkbliss wrote:
Primarchs? Space wolves had one in 2nd LOL
Although, I was never able to pick up the figure

http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/forumfiles/leman-russ-2nd-ed.jpg

This model pre-dates 2nd edition. It is also not a Primarch, there weren't Primarchs yet. Yes, it is still Leman Russ. He was just some generic captain in the Space Wolves.

We’ve had this discussion before. That model is based on the Jes Goodwin artwork and accompanying flavour text from WD 127 (I think) - by which point he was most definitely a Primarch.

He never had official stats in any edition.

See if you can find the first 2nd edition battle report; that has an army of fewer than 30 Marines against an Ork army which had no squads greater than ten models. That’s what 2nd edition is designed to cope with.

Sounds like White Dwarf 194 where Dark Angels (Gav Thorpe) failed to beat the Orks, losing due to a terminator getting shoved back by a Kop Dis psychic power on the final turn denying the Angels the objective.

No, it was the very first report in WD 166 (I think) - Blood Angels (with the original early 90s Blood Angel captain in gold armour) and their shiny brand-new "Castraferrum"-pattern dreadnought against the Orks. That became the battle in which Tycho suffered his injuries from a Weirdboy attack, although the Orks were ultimately defeated.

If memory serves, that battle report may slightly predate 2nd Ed.

Am most probably thinking of one with Space Woofs trying to rescue a Dark Angels Predator?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If memory serves, that battle report may slightly predate 2nd Ed.

Am most probably thinking of one with Space Woofs trying to rescue a Dark Angels Predator?

I think I remember this one, 5 man squads of grey hunters each led by a single wolf guard terminator, I believe their dreadnought got destroyed first turn by an Ork shokk attack gun

I'm almost positive there were rules for him somewhere, yet I still can't find them LOL
I remember something about his stats getting adjusted if 1 and/or both of his wolves were killed or something like that.

princeyg wrote:
Or how about the freakishly powerful warp spiders... i shoot you, i roll a die.. if i roll higher than your initiative...you are dead...yes dead regardless of wounds....but.. i get +1 to my total for every other one that has hit you this turn that you have managed to survive... on a weapon with A HEAVY FLAMER TEMPLATE!!!!!!!

I had orks. 'Friend' had eldar. So much this....

But Shokk attack guns were awesome/infuriating/hilarious.

TonyL707 wrote:

princeyg wrote:
Or how about the freakishly powerful warp spiders... i shoot you, i roll a die.. if i roll higher than your initiative...you are dead...yes dead regardless of wounds....but.. i get +1 to my total for every other one that has hit you this turn that you have managed to survive... on a weapon with A HEAVY FLAMER TEMPLATE!!!!!!!

I had orks. 'Friend' had eldar. So much this....

But Shokk attack guns were awesome/infuriating/hilarious.

I’ve seen OOP non-Bigmek models with SAGs on eBay. You could run SAGs as heavy weapons in squads, right?

 Cmdr_Sune wrote:
I guess this "model" is still legal since it's an official GW product.
I dare someone to field an Orc army filled with these at the LVO.

I did, a couple of years ago when I was getting back into 40K and was trying Oaks instead of my Dark angles. The store manager of my local GW shop was not impressed.

princeyg wrote:
Lets not forget 2nd ed Eldar d-cannons ( or distortion cannons to give em the full name) Utterly bonkers damage chart that could rematerialise your target 10 feet underground causing a sort of matter/anti-matter thermonuclear detonation.... i still to this day remember landing a predator ON TOP OF a land raider (yes you could teleport stuff up as well as down) . Treating the resultant mess as a vehicle ram, the land raider was unharmed but the predator was immobile..net result...landraider now has effectively three more sponson weapons.......

Or how about the freakishly powerful warp spiders... i shoot you, i roll a die.. if i roll higher than your initiative...you are dead...yes dead regardless of wounds....but.. i get +1 to my total for every other one that has hit you this turn that you have managed to survive... on a weapon with A HEAVY FLAMER TEMPLATE!!!!!!!

Come to think of it, the 2nd ed eldar book was truly truly horrifically powerful..(Jain zar being able to decimate armies with her spiky boomerang thingy is another one I,ve just remembered)

Fun yes....hilarious certainly...balanced IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER

Two Warp Spider antidotes:
1. Overwatch
2. Teleport Jammer

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If memory serves, that battle report may slightly predate 2nd Ed.

Am most probably thinking of one with Space Woofs trying to rescue a Dark Angels Predator?

That battlecreport was published about a year earlier, in 1st edition. Although it was reprinted in the 2nd edition Space Wolves Codex.

The opening flavour text had Ragnar leading the Space Wolves with a massive hangover.

 xeen wrote:
2nd is where I got my start as a teen. However looking back it was a broken complex mess of a game. It was like half an role playing game with the detail it got into, and half a standard miniature game.

That's because the 1st edition was originally very much a roleplaying/wargame hybrid. You were supposed to have a game master who developed scenarios, balanced the forces and controlled hazards and wildlife. Everyone liked the army lists a lot so that was used more and more until the 2nd edition was finally published and crystallised into what we would understand as 40K.


At least 2nd edition skipped the lists for random generation of equipment.

So many great memories here. I had fun playing Orks with my younger brother playing marines (original boxed set) and my older brother playing Eldar.

Here are a few of mine:

Ork boar boyz on cyboars where you could push the big red button to juice your boar into a craze. I think you charged farther and got some buff. I just remember it being very effective.

The crazy shokk attack gun with tables for different target types and if you rolled the max when shooting at a unit in a bunker, the whole unit was instantly wiped out, no questions asked (if I remember right).

A Dark Reaper blowing the track off a fast-moving Land Raider, causing the whole thing to flip, wiping out most or all of the terminators inside.

Attacking an Avatar with six or seven gretchin in close combat before one of my Ork characters attacked so I could get a massive bonus and win combat.

Ork characters driving around on gyro-stabilized mono wheels shooting some kustom guns that rolled the artillery die for a Strength.

Orks could have Ogryn allies and the Ripper guns were great fun with their rapid Fire dice, for the first turn anyway, and then they were all jammed.

The sight of an 8x4 ft table where each entire long edge was covered in vehicle cards, wargear cards, psychic power cards, strategies, missions, etc. Although, the new edition is moving back in that direction...

A lot of great memories for sure.

Orks could have vaccine squigs. I *loved* the virus card until that happened. But yeah, some really OTT stuff in 2nd. I would be absolutely howling and spitting blood if gw released that as the current edition now. Not that they're far off, mind you, but omg it wasn't balanced *at all*.

 Ratius wrote:
Anyone remember the Nid pregame stratagem unit charts?
You'd roll a d6 for every squad, character and vehicle your opponent had with various effects kicking in. Some of them enough to really cripple your opponent before the game kicked off

Oh and yeah multiple batteries of Pulsa rockets were absolute game winners.

Jones, is something wrong?
Jones?
JONES!!!

Was that the edition where you had the option of multiple barrels for Ork Kustom weapons and you could just keep rolling as long as you paid the pts

My brother used to amass squads with about 30 gun barrels of all sorts of kind - so one Ork might be firing a lascannon/hv plasma gun/stub pistol/las pistol "gun" and his mates would be similar....

 Mr Morden wrote:
Was that the edition where you had the option of multiple barrels for Ork Kustom weapons and you could just keep rolling as long as you paid the pts

My brother used to amass squads with about 30 gun barrels of all sorts of kind - so one Ork might be firing a lascannon/hv plasma gun/stub pistol/las pistol "gun" and his mates would be similar....

I don't specifically remember the paying extra points but there was an Ork artillery called a Splatta kannon that was a Kannon shell covered in rockits that would fire and bounce and bounce and bounce with the artillery dice. so after the first shot who knows where it would go. My brother lobbed it at my IG squad, it hit and killed some of them and then bounced into another squad and after a bit went back at his army and killed some of his models before it stopped!

Also, the Deathskulls kustom shootas had a very cool simple mechanic --- they used the Artillery dice every time you fired. The result: Misfire, 2,4,6,8,10 --- determined the Strength of the attack and the Armour Save modifier (half of what you rolled) etc. A Misfire obviously hurt you.

Everything was just very Orky - I think that's why I enjoy the Obliterator rules for CSM, they remind me of stuff like that.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Was that the edition where you had the option of multiple barrels for Ork Kustom weapons and you could just keep rolling as long as you paid the pts

No, that was 1st edition.

Transport vehicles were moving coffins. No one took them because when they blew up, they were death traps.

I think the Carnifex had like 4 different armor saves or something.

The Nid Barbed Strangler would land, burst out vines, and kill everything it touched.

Heroes could tear through armies on their own.

Orks have a grot launcher, that would teleport a grot inside enemy vehicles and destroy them.

Orks trukks had a rule where you could transport as many orks in them as could physically fit on the trukk, so players would build giant nets and ferry around dozens of Orks.

Ork Trukks also had a rule that while moving, any ork model that falls off the vehicle and lands on the table top dies instantly.

Between two good friends, 2nd edition is still fun if you are using it for skirmish games between infantry forces, removing squad cohesion and buying models single at a very low points cap (like, 200-250pts). Ignore the normal rules for choosing squads and the percentage of total force rules, and just buy what feels fun but not overpowered. Add in the flesh wound rules from Necromunda, even. Psykers and the psychic phase can be an issue, so can be ignored as needed, same with special characters.

Makes for fun games without falling prey to larger 40k second ed. problems, like how melee gets horrific between large squads. As long as the interactions between models are kept small, the rules of 2nd edition play just fine, it ends up feeling just like Necromunda (no surprise given the rules sharing), but with main 40k races.

 jeff white wrote:

 Ratius wrote:
Anyone remember the Nid pregame stratagem unit charts?
You'd roll a d6 for every squad, character and vehicle your opponent had with various effects kicking in. Some of them enough to really cripple your opponent before the game kicked off

Oh and yeah multiple batteries of Pulsa rockets were absolute game winners.

Jones, is something wrong?
Jones?
JONES!!!

Falantir was moving closer to his quarry, they had been infiltrating this cold forest under the cover of darkness. To his right Elrania was perched on a tree bunch watching the Tyranid swarm as it closed in on the Eldar battleline, to his left Menelyth was checking the communication links were still operating. The sun had barely started to rise and the Falantir's squad of scouts was ready to engage. A brood of homugaunts, horrible fast moving almost locust shaped creatures could be seen appoaching. He heard a cough, why would someone ruin this well engineered stealthy operation. He turned back to the squad, it was Jones ... he looked unwel...

The forest exploded as the barbed strangler ripped apart Jones in a flurry of barbed tentacles, in a matter of moments the once proud eldar scout squad was dead, save for Menelyth. As he cursed Jones under his breath, ichor and eldar blood dripping off his cloak he looked up only to see a lot of sharp lance like claws and talons leaping towards him with ferocious alien speed!

 BuFFo wrote:


Heroes could tear through armies on their own.

Not at all. Heroes could rip apart other expensive single models but struggled to eat through a mob of boys over the course of a game. Pretty funny watching a Bloodthirster go to fumbletown with his 10 attacks.

 MarsNZ wrote:

 BuFFo wrote:


Heroes could tear through armies on their own.

Not at all. Heroes could rip apart other expensive single models but struggled to eat through a mob of boys over the course of a game. Pretty funny watching a Bloodthirster go to fumbletown with his 10 attacks.

Or simply be forced to kill one infantry grunt per combat phase(when game had 8 combat phase total)

Martel732 wrote:"2nd threads are just the best threads on this forum. 2nd was by far the best edition conceived by the designers. Just imagine a 40K game without offenders like super-heavy vehicles, flyers and primarchs. Other boons were an interesting psychic phase like the magic phase in WHFB and a Hiding & Overwatch (full BS with some modifiers) mechanic. You basically had in most cases two characters (beatstick & psyker), two to four infantry squads, an APC, Dreadnought and a tank. "

And it was still a white hot dumpster fire. 3rd ed was MUCH better.

Pretty much summed up my opinion. Granted. 2nd was better without wargear, but that was only a small improvement.

AegisGrimm wrote:Between two good friends, 2nd edition is still fun if you are using it for skirmish games between infantry forces, removing squad cohesion and buying models single at a very low points cap (like, 200-250pts). Ignore the normal rules for choosing squads and the percentage of total force rules, and just buy what feels fun but not overpowered. Add in the flesh wound rules from Necromunda, even. Psykers and the psychic phase can be an issue, so can be ignored as needed, same with special characters.

Makes for fun games without falling prey to larger 40k second ed. problems, like how melee gets horrific between large squads. As long as the interactions between models are kept small, the rules of 2nd edition play just fine, it ends up feeling just like Necromunda (no surprise given the rules sharing), but with main 40k races.

OR

Just play Necromunda.

 MarsNZ wrote:

 BuFFo wrote:


Heroes could tear through armies on their own.

Not at all. Heroes could rip apart other expensive single models but struggled to eat through a mob of boys over the course of a game. Pretty funny watching a Bloodthirster go to fumbletown with his 10 attacks.

I find that unlikely assuming A: the mob passed the terror test when charging, B: avoided the khorne whip attack, C: survived the round of combat (fumble or not they aren't really going to do any damage unless one of them has a power weapon, WS 3 vs WS 10, strength 3 +1 for an axe vs toughness 7 and the 3+ terminatord 2d6 armour save, plus multiple wounds.) Didn't break as they will lose of the lads in the encounter.

As a monstrous creature the Bloodthirster can just brush aside the boys after a round of hand to hand combat and go off to tear up something that is actually a threat without a penalty.

Now if they charged Fabius Bile or Marneus Calgar then yes they can bog them down.

 Shuma-Gorath wrote:

I find that unlikely assuming A: the mob passed the terror test when charging, B: avoided the khorne whip attack, C: survived the round of combat (fumble or not they aren't really going to do any damage unless one of them has a power weapon, WS 3 vs WS 10, strength 3 +1 for an axe vs toughness 7 and the 3+ terminatord 2d6 armour save, plus multiple wounds.) Didn't break as they will lose of the lads in the encounter.

As a monstrous creature the Bloodthirster can just brush aside the boys after a round of hand to hand combat and go off to tear up something that is actually a threat without a penalty.

Now if they charged Fabius Bile or Marneus Calgar then yes they can bog them down.

Point isn't to threat. Point is give him ONE model to fight with. Bloodthirster then kills 1 model. Repeat until game ends.

You don't care whether you kill it. You feed him 1 model at a time=max 8 models killed in game. As long as you don't have expensive single models expensive blood thirster struggles to do much.

But like he said monstrous creature can just walk away....dreadnoughts could do the same.

If you added 8th edition hth to 2nd (keeps obscene characters from butchering whole units per phase)

use 2nd edition rules/weapons ranges, etc.

Make overwatch a stratagem and add stratagems to 2nd.

I would probably add 8th edition movement as well.

Keep the datafaxes from 2nd edition and the wargear.

Make the psychic phase once per battleround not per players turn (this was suggested in a game just this past week)

If that was 9th edition I would sell/market that game to everyone who never heard of 40k and get them all to play it.

Oh throw in prepainted starter units. Yep they can use that to jump into the hobby and then become paintmasters later.

And where in rules that was?

Still no biggie. It goes out, charges another mob of grunts, gets 1-2 models into b2b contact. Grunt here or grunt there. Either way grunt dies.

Key is to not provide expensive models for target. Whether from unit or from army. And of course you can have your cheap champion with vortex grenade get rid of offensive blood thirster.

Every time, like clock work, the Malfunction Strategy Card was used to explode my Chaos Dreadnought's Plasma Cannon.

Hand Flamer template & Gork & Mork Foot were cool.

I liked the Assault Weapon Sprue that had las pistols & auto pistols on it.

I wished I had not given away the Orks & Gretchin that came with the 2nd Edition Boxed set.

I should have held on to My 2nd Ed. Khorne Berzerkers & Plague Marines. Oh Well.

Man so many good memories involving such a terrible rule set!

I started out with Eldar right after their codex was released and eventually ended up playing Dark Angels after the Angels of Death codex came out, I don't even remember what caught my eye but I've loved the DA since. I remember running two squads of terminators, and a dreadnought hunkered around Azreal and his 4+ invul field moving slowly across the board mowing just about everything down while my opponents tried to get through the 2+ on a 2D6 and the 4+ invul. While my Ravenwing bikers shot across the board in a single turn and had something like a -4 to be shot at due to how fast they went. Good times...

I also remember hating the insane Chaos Lords with all 4 marks in terminator armor, which made them a psychic, super tough, and super mean in CC. And they would hide in one of my opponents 6+ Rhinos with khorne berserkers filling up a few of the other ones and your opponent not having to tell you which units where in which rhinos. You'd just have to start popping them and see if anything came out.

The psychic phase after they released the expansion was insane! It took the already complicated game and just turned it up to 11. I still have most of the cards and stuff from 2nd, just couldn't bring myself to ever throw them out.

tneva82 wrote:
And where in rules that was?

Still no biggie. It goes out, charges another mob of grunts, gets 1-2 models into b2b contact. Grunt here or grunt there. Either way grunt dies.

Key is to not provide expensive models for target. Whether from unit or from army. And of course you can have your cheap champion with vortex grenade get rid of offensive blood thirster.

It's in the 2nd edition Tyranid Codex & Chaos Codex rule books.

Big forests or deathworld jungle terrain getting you down?, grab a missile launcher and get firing those anti-plant missiles. Soon the enemy won't be able to hide at all

Orks or Imperial Guard on mass causing you trouble, load up the hallucinogen grenades and watch them run screaming with laughter into a river or something.

Want to use the Heavy Webber in the wargear book? BAd luck as it has no points value or vehicle it can be added to listed anywhere.

My sole surviving Chaos Terminator chasing after my opponents Weirdboy Warphead. A Shokk Atakk Gun killed all his friends in one shot. First Heavy Flamer burst incinerated both of his handlers and set the Wierdboy on fire. The Wierdboy then spent the rest of the game running around wildly due to fire and firing off a random Psychic power each Psychic phase due to the deaths of his handlers. He even managed to Da Crunch my Predator into the ground while my Terminator hosed him down each turn til the Ork had had enough and ran off the board on the last turn. Still didn't manage to kill him ha!

Yes the narrative results of those games are told decades later.....

you don't have very much from 3rd or 7th or 8th other than I smashed' I'm or I got smashed or I survived with 1 model but won on points, etc

 admironheart wrote:
Yes the narrative results of those games are told decades later.....

you don't have very much from 3rd or 7th or 8th other than I smashed' I'm or I got smashed or I survived with 1 model but won on points, etc

Sad but true. The most exciting battles were fought in 2nd. Detail was a key element to it´s success.

So you consider having your list being chain pulsa-rokkitted to be fun and exciting? Good to know.

Oh I dunno. The details of 2nd did make for good storytelling. That's undeniable.

But I can think of stories from later editions as well. In 3rd I recall a BA army killing a chaos force down to the last champion, then that champion becoming a Bloodthirster, proceeding to murder the BA army on his own.

In 4th, drawing a space wolf army into the center of the field, then hopping into Land Raiders and driving away, leaving his army encircled and getting gunned down.

In 5th, a last ditch effort by Kharn to kill as many Necron Warriors as possible in a round of combat, forcing a break test, them failing, Kharn running them down and forcing the Crons to phase out.

In 6th, the Doom of Malantai melting my poor Space Marines as I was just starting out with my new army.

In 7th, full frontal assaults against Tau. Getting a Tactical Squad and Chaplain in base to base with both pathfinders and a Riptide, killing most pathfinders, forcing them and the Riptide into morale checks, and running them down.

 Shuma-Gorath wrote:
Big forests or deathworld jungle terrain getting you down?, grab a missile launcher and get firing those anti-plant missiles. Soon the enemy won't be able to hide at all

Orks or Imperial Guard on mass causing you trouble, load up the hallucinogen grenades and watch them run screaming with laughter into a river or something.

Want to use the Heavy Webber in the wargear book? BAd luck as it has no points value or vehicle it can be added to listed anywhere.

Or Rippers.

Yep, Ripper Swarms ate terrain they crossed during the game. Which is just as well, as they were pretty naff otherwise!

Yes, this is a bit of threadomancy.

I miss 2nd ed orks... had one big fight once over a shokk attack gun hitting a bunker and rolling the "everything dies result". Also miss the squig catapults and the buzz squigs roaming the table randomly afterwards.

Also played a few games with squats from the initial army book (similar to the 8th edition index)

Shot an opponents Hive Tyrant with a graviton gun... rules were that a hit (just a hit!) meant the target couldn't move shoot or attack the rest of the game...

Also remember sacrificing a cheap fodder character armed with only a vortex grenade to take out an Avatar of Khaine once. That caused a lot of grief.

I MISSED grav guns in the latest editions. Not sure what the fuss was about... But that Graviton Gun for Tech priests and squat engineers was my go to weapon to take down vehicles and super chaos characters.

I think characters hit with it could still shoot or at least fight in hth but without movement....even with a warp jump generator you essentially took out their big piece.

I miss the Ancestor Lord. As tough as any lord in hth, slow as hell, and some of the best psychic powers in the game.

And he made the strategy rating of your army better by d3!!
I guess he had good and bad days lol

I know they could use psychic powers... Not sure about shooting. Maybe his tyrant was only tooled out for close combat. Either way, he was livid... =)

These sort of things do occasionally still happen - just watched a game the other day where a Knight threw a sentinel into a Shadowsword for it's final three wounds. And of course, it exploded. Pretty amusing, but still not as spectacular as some 2nd ed events

Techmarines could take three wargear cards. They were our preferred vortex grenade and graviton gun delivery systems either with a warp jump generator or on an Imperial jetbike

tsk tsk....Graviton gun is for Tech priests and squat engineers only....I guess Mars did not want to share all the goodies with the Tech Marines.

but yeah....take a warp jump and bionic arm and you can throw that vortex grenade just about anywhere.

Just becareful of super heavy tanks or titans. They all came equipped with Vortex Detonators or would wargear up!

It was fun to see some vortex go off and piss off your opponent. Then they had that look of shame for bringing it to the game!

I just been reading up on Rad grenades....they seem very deadly for imperial agents to take if used correctly.

Rad grenades could be horrible. Blight grenades too. T3 dudes really hated you for those.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
We didn't know anybody with a super heavy or a titan, except my Tempest but I don't think we had more Info than the basic data card for using it.
That was an Eldar tank adapted from Epic scale as most of the supers were. Iirc it had twin pulse lasers, twin shuriken cannon, and six shuriken catapults.

 Brotherjulian wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:
We didn't know anybody with a super heavy or a titan, except my Tempest but I don't think we had more Info than the basic data card for using it.
That was an Eldar tank adapted from Epic scale as most of the supers were. Iirc it had twin pulse lasers, twin shuriken cannon, and six shuriken catapults.

I had a full squadron of 3 of them. I bought all my Lords of War in the same formations they operated in epic. So 2 Revenants and 3 tempests formed my battleformations.

If you used Crystalline Web on the Tempest it could be one of the most powerful tanks in 2nd. I once had 3 Tempests with almost no Wargear and my pal had a Single Tempest maxed out with Wargear cards and ended up costing more than 2 of mine.

In the End it was mutal destruction but he took out all 3 of mine and I had only crippled his.

My first use of my Revenant met the same fate vs his super buffed up Tempest in a game as well.

I miss the Tempest as a Main battle line tank in 40k.

The Falcon is at best a light tank like the Razorback. The Fire Prism is our only mid grade tank for Eldar and really only has 1 loadout. The Scorpion and Cobra are extra large super heavies. The Tempest would be a great fit in current 40k as it was weaker than a ShadowSword but stronger than a Land Raider.....so a pure Main Line Battle Tank. It was perfect for 2nd ed and it would be awesome for 8th. Only the Lynx is close to it in stats...but the stupid lumbering flyer rule makes it less than preferred.