I've seen people make all sorts of references along the lines of 'the good old days', or airing old grievances. I've heard lots about 2nd, 3rd and 5th ed (my first game was at the tail end of 5th just before the start of 6th).
But I almost never see people refer to 4th ed at all. Why is this, was it bad?

Lols, maybe its like 4th ed DnD where every body hated it and it is best to forget about it.

From what I remember (I started with 4th and dropped it after a while then returned in 2009, so I have no experience with anything before 4th) there's not really many good old days of 4th ed. The cover system from what I remember was interesting but annoying, basically terrain features had a size value and so did the models; though I do like the true line of sight from 5th ed more as it was more streamlined but not without fault. To shoot at anything further than the closest unit you had to make a leadership test.

Skimmers were broken (fish of fury) and annoying. Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

4th was good. That's why you don't hear much about it. If something was good, it's not usually talked about. If something was bad, then people will whine constantly about it.

 n0t_u wrote:
From what I remember (I started with 4th and dropped it after a while then returned in 2009, so I have no experience with anything before 4th) there's not really many good old days of 4th ed. The cover system from what I remember was interesting but annoying, basically terrain features had a size value and so did the models; though I do like the true line of sight from 5th ed more as it was more streamlined but not without fault. To shoot at anything further than the closest unit you had to make a leadership test.

Skimmers were broken (fish of fury) and annoying. Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

Pretty sure consolidiation to combat was REMOVED in 4th ed. It was big problem in 3rd ed especially when there was possible 1st turn charges so BA armies etc kept running over with hidden fists, 1st turn charges and consolidiating into new combats.

Could be wrong but I could swear lack of that was big change in 4th

tneva82 wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
From what I remember (I started with 4th and dropped it after a while then returned in 2009, so I have no experience with anything before 4th) there's not really many good old days of 4th ed. The cover system from what I remember was interesting but annoying, basically terrain features had a size value and so did the models; though I do like the true line of sight from 5th ed more as it was more streamlined but not without fault. To shoot at anything further than the closest unit you had to make a leadership test.

Skimmers were broken (fish of fury) and annoying. Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

Pretty sure consolidiation to combat was REMOVED in 4th ed. It was big problem in 3rd ed especially when there was possible 1st turn charges so BA armies etc kept running over with hidden fists, 1st turn charges and consolidiating into new combats.

Could be wrong but I could swear lack of that was big change in 4th

I think it was 5th because I had started in 4th and remember the fear of genestealers I used to get from before I put thought into positioning my own units and how they'd wiped out a unit or two in a single turn.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I've seen people make all sorts of references along the lines of 'the good old days', or airing old grievances. I've heard lots about 2nd, 3rd and 5th ed (my first game was at the tail end of 5th just before the start of 6th).
But I almost never see people refer to 4th ed at all. Why is this, was it bad?

It was pretty good, actually. The vehicle rules were fragile, Eldar broke the game at the end of its life and a lot of codices wouldn't receive an update until 5th ed, but overall it was a nice edition, especially from a hobbying standpoint as back then GW openly encouraged conversions and scratch-building terrain, something that they only recently started to do again (barely)
I preferred it to 5th ed, 6th ed and 7th ed at least, which gradually made the game more absurd until a hard reset in the form of 8th was required. And whilst I do prefer 8th ed to 6th and 7th, I still greatly prefer the older style of formatting and list building, where the points were actually in the codex entry, instead of having to flip to another section of the book.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
From what I remember (I started with 4th and dropped it after a while then returned in 2009, so I have no experience with anything before 4th) there's not really many good old days of 4th ed. The cover system from what I remember was interesting but annoying, basically terrain features had a size value and so did the models; though I do like the true line of sight from 5th ed more as it was more streamlined but not without fault. To shoot at anything further than the closest unit you had to make a leadership test.

Skimmers were broken (fish of fury) and annoying. Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

Pretty sure consolidiation to combat was REMOVED in 4th ed. It was big problem in 3rd ed especially when there was possible 1st turn charges so BA armies etc kept running over with hidden fists, 1st turn charges and consolidiating into new combats.

Could be wrong but I could swear lack of that was big change in 4th

Nope, consolidation in combat still existed in 4th. Which is why Harlequins and stealers were so goddamn annoying, because they can just hop from unit to unit.

From a personal POV, I just didn’t get in many games of 4th. My FLGS had closed, and it was during a rough patch in my life financially.

It was also a transition system. 3rd reset everything to a simple level. 5th was a tighter refined (but larger) ruleset. 4th was just kinda in the middle. People, especially on the internet, tend to favor extremes. But also extremes stick out in your memory. 4th was just a quiet step in the evolution of 3rd to 7th.

It had it’s flaws (vehicles, especially transports, comes to mind) but also some interesting quirks (target priority, terrain, change to rapid fire). Not a bad edition, but not the best.

What years was it in use?

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
What years was it in use?

August 2004 - July 2008

I played mostly in 4th and loved it. I thought it was the golden era of codexes and rulebook (3.5->4) anyway. I'm definetly biased but I sometimes take out the old 4th books and read them over. I think it might not get much mentioning because 3d was the huge overhaul and 5th was the beginning of the fall. 4th kind of gets squeezed between them. If people talk about it then they usually mention the release of apocalypse, the cityfight rules and the closing of specialist games. Also it bears note that campaigns from 3d, like the armageddon and eye of terror campaign, kind of overshadows 4th fall for medusa campaign. The 4ed rulebook also incuded that wonderfull little minigame: kill team. I had a lots of fun with that system. It was very diffrent from the kill team game we have now. There was also a certain focus on levelling up models during the course of campaigns.

As per game mechanics I think it was solid enough. It had a bigger emphasis on close combat then any other edition, which I liked.

4th was when I started. I like to think about it as Chaos' hayday. There was so many customization options for lords, Lts, and champions. You could even give bikers chainaxes. The one thing that did suck for me was, I couldn't run raptors or obliteraters without losing my WE traits. Because they couldn't have different marks.

The terrain rules made sense to me as well. Assault was good. You could sweeping advance into another unit and attack, but only if you wiped out the unit you charged before they attacked back.

 Nerak wrote:
As per game mechanics I think it was solid enough. It had a bigger emphasis on close combat then any other edition, which I liked.

How did it handle CC compared to 8th?

I started in 4th and still have the 4th edition rulebook on my shelf after chucking everything since into the recycler. 4th was alright; 8th is better, the bits between were the teething problems we had to get to it.

8th is 4th with the following improvements:

Characters can actually be killed
Turn 1 charge is possible but a serious challenge, as it should be
Consolidate into combat doesn't shut down an entire gunline
Blast Weapons that aren't a total chore/waste of time to resolve.
Chaos Close Combat isn't unbeatable
Scoring/Objectives much more sensible
VASTLY better internal balance per codex, which is saying something about how bad 4th was, not how good 8th is. It's likely that the only non mono-build army of the era was Chaos, which is part of why they liked it so much
Pre-measuring ranges is allowed
All kinds of vehicles are useful
The AP System doesn't render entire codex options irrelevant
SPLIT FIRE

And the following regressions:
The Cover System
The loss of outflank
The loss of comparative weapon skill (I do miss this)
Loss of Reserves walking on (this too)

As for close combat, i've gone on a proper good rant about it here. The Big deal to emphasise is that shooting attacks and meelee at the initative step were all resolved together, but the player who owned the models being targeted assigned the *weapons* that scored wounds to his own models; so you could take high strength, good ap wounds on ablative shields, and bolters on 2+ armour saves all the day long. In CC this was even worse as power weapons were straight up ignore armour saves meaning PWeps were a very expensive gamble. This was also the era before challenges, where characters could simply swap entourages whenever they liked and never take a wound during the course of the game.

4th was ok. 3rd edition was very CC driven. 4th edition was the beginning of nerfing CC so it was hated by people that liiked their CC armies.

4th got cracked open when Leaf Blower entered the picture. It still had its busted codices but the rules overall weren't bad. They were very similar to 3rd ed rules with some tweaks like the removal of consolidation into combat and things of that nature.

4th was not offensively bad, nor a shining golden god. That's why no-one really talks about it.

4th is in a weird place where 3rd was remembered for everything being on relative equal terms (and being bland. oh so bland. Space Marine Terminators having conditional Deepstrike was considered "out there") while 5th was remembered for having the most fun set of rules (unless you were a nid player), only mired by the last three Ward Dexes. 4th, by comparison, was a hasty patchjob trying to unify some of 3rd's unique mechanics (such as Fearless), the streamlining of a few armies (most notably, this caused Chaos to become a one-note force while Orks became ridiculously OP), and the introduction of a few mechanics that would not be fully refined until 5th (most notably Eternal Warrior).

Basically, 3rd edition was the basis, 4th was mid-polish, and 5th was the real polish before the semi-overhaul that was 6th (flyers, psyker rules and mainstream detachment systems).

 chimeara wrote:
4th was when I started. I like to think about it as Chaos' hayday. There was so many customization options for lords, Lts, and champions. You could even give bikers chainaxes. The one thing that did suck for me was, I couldn't run raptors or obliteraters without losing my WE traits. Because they couldn't have different marks.

The terrain rules made sense to me as well. Assault was good. You could sweeping advance into another unit and attack, but only if you wiped out the unit you charged before they attacked back.

That's the 3.5 codex, the 4E chaos codex is the one that cut all the legion stuff out.

4th did have one of the best rulebooks they ever printed (as far as content goes).

If I recall correctly, it had:
40k rules
Kill Team rules
Combat Patrol rules
Campaign rules
Terrain building instructions (homemade stuff)
Painting guide
Scenarios (like 10 or 12 of them)

It just felt like the last main rulebook to throw everything in before they started removing stuff.

Indeed. It was the last time this game was truly a hobby.

Also one often overlooked aspect of 4th edition was Black Gobbo, which was a wealth of hobby info and what really got me into the game.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
4th was not offensively bad, nor a shining golden god. That's why no-one really talks about it.

Also known as the beige edition.

 zedmeister wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
4th was not offensively bad, nor a shining golden god. That's why no-one really talks about it.

Also known as the beige edition.

It was the dark days for Chaos however. Getting that awful Gavdex was what sharply cut CSM down and tried to make every chaos army feel very samey, while the background tried to demphasize the legions and started the "Every bit of legion is gone, just small warbands of chaos pillaging."

I actually really enjoyed 4th.

Vehicles blew up a lot, but that was fun and okay. Superheavy tanks were actually fairly well balanced for their cost, and fit into the army in unique and innovative ways (e.g. a Baneblade took up 3 Heavy Support slots, but a Warhound Titan took up 3 heavy support and an HQ, while something smaller like a Malcador might only take up 2 Heavy Support) which actually seems like a neat way to include them. In trade for being fairly fragile, 4th edition had the "Defensive Weapons" rule which meant that any weapon of str 5 or below could be fired on the move without penalty, IIRC, making things like heavy bolters and heavy flamers preferential to things like lascannons and multi-meltas for sponsons if you planned on moving.

Transports were hard to use, because units that came out of a destroyed transport were Entangled (essentially Pinning that worked on units otherwise immune to Pinning), but were pretty badass when they worked, allowing people to assault out of them.

The only problem I had with 4th, that actually made me upset, was the consolidating from combat-into-combat. It was like 8th except the unit that consolidated could fight, so they could fight 5 or 6 or infinity times in a turn and just steamroll a line.

The game was also much smaller back then - a single Baneblade or trio of Leman Russ Tanks was a lot of heavy armour, for example, and Guard usually only brought two or three big platoons (so max 100 guardsmen really). At least in my meta.

What was so different about the vehicles?

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
What was so different about the vehicles?

hullpoints/wounds were gone.

Vehicles had armour values on different facings (which worked at this scale because like I said, having more than 5 tanks in a list was RARE). If you matched or beat the armour, you got a special effect, and it differed based on weapon type:

Glancing hits table:
1) Crew shaken: Can move, but not fire.
2) Crew Stunned: Can't move, can't fire.
3) (I forget this one, could be crew stunned and crew shaken was 1 or 2?)
4) Weapon Destroyed
5) Immobilized
6) Destroyed

Penetrating hits table:
1) Crew shaken: Can move, but not fire.
2) Crew Stunned: Can't move, can't fire.
3) Weapon Destroyed
4) Immobilized
5) Destroyed
6) Explodes

Ordnance penetrating hits table:
1) Crew stunned
2) Weapon Destroyed
3) Immobilized
4) Destroyed
5) Explodes
6) Annihilated.

They are pretty severe, and transports were fairly bad, but the game was epic. Ordnance weapons felt like proper tank killers, and they should have been because they stopped you from firing all your other guns, even defensive weapons. So things like Vanquisher tanks had One Big Gun essentially, but holy feth did that big gun do work. I remember playing against a buddy's Daemonhunters with an Inquisition Land Raider stuffed full of GK and a terminator armour inquisitor, and my tank command Vanquisher got a Vehicle Annihilated result. The land raider and all its passengers were deleted, and everything within an automatic 6" took a strength 4 (? I think) hit. It was glorious.

Superheavy Tanks had things called 'structure points' which were kind of like hull points, but synergized with the damage chart. So for example, a Baneblade had 3 structure points, and any Explodes or better results allowed another roll on the chart (called a Chain Reaction). So you'd end up with a Vanquisher tank doing the following:
1 structure point, with a 5+ on the ordnance penetrating hits chart which is an Explodes, so he rolls again and scores a Weapon Destroyed result. It really made Baneblades quite fragile, but people were less psychologically scarred by them for it, so it was a lot of fun.

The thing I miss most about 7th is vehicle explosions, the idea of the shell punching through the armour and hitting the ammunition and BOOM. I know a lot of people are happy to see it gone, but to me annihilated sounds awesome.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
The thing I miss most about 7th is vehicle explosions, the idea of the shell punching through the armour and hitting the ammunition and BOOM. I know a lot of people are happy to see it gone, but to me annihilated sounds awesome.

The problem with 7th imo wasn't the damage table so much as the hull points.

The problem with 4th edition's vehicle rules was you were just as likely to get Crew Stunned as you were Vehicle Annihilated, even with a Vanquisher. That meant that you could fire a Vanquisher at a Baneblade and get 3 Chain Reactions in a row and blow it up with a Vehicle Annihilated on a superheavy, and then shoot at a Rhino for 6 turns and get 6 Crew Stunned results.

So they tried to level out the damage vehicles suffered by adding Hull Points, but now vehicles had 2 kill mechanics: they could still Explode in one shot, or they could endure 3 Crew Shaken results and just sort of .... fall apart.

I do think 8th edition is the best solution, allowing vehicles to suffer damage (degrading profile) while still having a fairly flat death curve (instead of just insta-exploding or never dying).

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I've seen people make all sorts of references along the lines of 'the good old days', or airing old grievances. I've heard lots about 2nd, 3rd and 5th ed (my first game was at the tail end of 5th just before the start of 6th).
But I almost never see people refer to 4th ed at all. Why is this, was it bad?

Mostly it was just an evolved version of 3E. Basically it was 3E with some slightly different terrain rules, absurdly punitive transport rules (literally any penetrating hit required the unit to disembark and take a pinning test, even if it just shook the tank otherwise), and some better CC rules.

CC was pretty big as area terrain made it very easy to avoid LoS completely and could then use new consolidations to chain-run up a line. Non-skimmer vehicles were pretty bad and non-skimmer transports were nonfunctional.

But mostly, 4E was just a slightly modified 3E. The power armies were mostly Starcannon-spam/Alaitoc Disruption Eldar then Skimmerspam Flying Circus once their 2006 book came out, Assault cannon spam & Lasplas marines, Tau Fish-o-fury, Necrons kinda in general, and various CSM builds.

Guard Armoured Company was strong too, but too expensive to compete at the highest levels. Much like my 3-superheavy tank list is now: it was "meta defining" for casuals while being cripplingly underequipped for competitive play.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Guard Armoured Company was strong too, but too expensive to compete at the highest levels. Much like my 3-superheavy tank list is now: it was "meta defining" for casuals while being cripplingly underequipped for competitive play.

They tended to, when Chapter Approved lists were allowed, either totally overrun an opponent or get tabled by turn 3, they were very awkward lists, and the Russ was at its probably least functional state ever in 4E (ordnance restrictions on firing main gun and other weapons, no Heavy/Lumbering Behemoth, side AV12, no Ballistic Skill scatter reduction, blasts hit partially covered models on a 4+ instead of automatically, etc)

4th was my favorite edition (I do love 8th though). I played every edition, except 6th and 4th was amazing.

I loved the abstract terrain and line of sight rules. No arguments. Everything had a size and blocked things smaller than it's size. Area terrain blocked line of sight from one side to the other which made hiding things actually plausible.

The Assault phase was much better than 3rd and wound allocation was clean and simple.

Victory points were the best they've ever been. Everything was awarded as a percentage of your army point total and "kill point" style missions used the actual value of the unit.

Transport rules were pretty terrible though.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Guard Armoured Company was strong too, but too expensive to compete at the highest levels. Much like my 3-superheavy tank list is now: it was "meta defining" for casuals while being cripplingly underequipped for competitive play.

They tended to, when Chapter Approved lists were allowed, either totally overrun an opponent or get tabled by turn 3, they were very awkward lists, and the Russ was at its probably least functional state ever in 4E (ordnance restrictions on firing main gun and other weapons, no Heavy/Lumbering Behemoth, side AV12, no Ballistic Skill scatter reduction, blasts hit partially covered models on a 4+ instead of automatically, etc)

Pretty much all of this is true, though in my meta I brought it so often that it was normally the "get tabled by turn 3" option because people knew what to expect.

And Chapter Approved was allowed locally throughout all of 4th Edition until the Armoured Battlegroup list dropped, though I know it was not allowed at 'Ard Boyz after 2006.

I remember not liking it very much, primarily because transport vehicles were coffins and Chaos 3.5 Codex was brutally powerful. The terrain abstraction rules were lame (a land speeder was bigger than a Land Raider).

However, my biggest issue was the 4th edition Dark Angels Codex. It is widely regarded as one of the all time worst Codexes ever produced. My beloved Dark Angels became "Green Marines" for several years because of that abomination.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 chimeara wrote:
4th was when I started. I like to think about it as Chaos' hayday. There was so many customization options for lords, Lts, and champions. You could even give bikers chainaxes. The one thing that did suck for me was, I couldn't run raptors or obliteraters without losing my WE traits. Because they couldn't have different marks.

The terrain rules made sense to me as well. Assault was good. You could sweeping advance into another unit and attack, but only if you wiped out the unit you charged before they attacked back.

That's the 3.5 codex, the 4E chaos codex is the one that cut all the legion stuff out.

Oh yeah, I sometimes forget about that. Since when they nutered chaos I left the game.

4th remaines possibly my favorite edition, especially if you played Omega mission rules. Terrain rules were excellent. Army customization was at it's height. Non vanilla space marine chapters hadn't bloated with nonsense yet.

From what I recall the ruleset itself wasn’t bad it was just the codices for that era. It was a shift from the whacky and wild, Andy Chambers influenced days of 3rd edition where most units had obscured levels of customization to the more modern cookie cutter approach. GW also rein in a large amount of variant and Chapter Approved/White Dwarf, codices which also caused strife from people who had dropped armies.

My memory between 3rd and 4th is kind of fuzzy. They were pretty much linked if I remember and I don't think the codexes were updated between the editions which is why I kind of clump them together. Or it's my old age.


In 4th could you assault out of a transport? Or was that a 3rd Edition thing? I remember obviously Blood Angels jumping out of an overcharged Rhino or Black Templar from Armageddon Codex leaping out of a Rhino hitting on 3+ always. Back then Marines were actually one of the best armies since you could just from vehicle straight into assault. Just can't remember if that was a 3rd or 4th thing.

Also what edition had the Rending Assault Cannons of Doom? This is when Assault Cannons would Rend and ignore saves on a 6+ TO HIT. It still put out 4 shots. I remember statically this being better at killing vehicles than Lascannons (obviously you have to factor range in). I remember having started a Tyranid army and just being like WTF. In theory, big creatures should die to lascannons and gaunts to heavy bolters. You want to mess up your opponent's resources and have them not have enough anti-tank or anti-infantry fire. The assault cannon of that edition, not sure if that was 4th or 5th, was basically an all-around killer. I just pretty much knew this was a waste of time with Tyranids if facing against Assault cannon mania.

3rd Edition had the Rhino Rush. 4th was similar, but you could only assault out of a STATIONARY vehicle, which meant you had to spend a turn farting about in your transport and since transports were deathboxes it was way less good than in 3rd. Unless you had the Assault Vehicle rule (like Land Raiders, which I think were the only ones).

The assault out of Stationary Vehicles was 5th edition. Assault vehicles didn't exist in 4th, but transports were also drastically more expensive to compensate. That combined with Consolidating into combat made CC heinous in 4th edition (although it isn't exclusive as the rules didn't really change between 3rd and 4th, 4th just had much, much better assault troops).

Transports were odd in 4th; passengers had to disembark and became Pinned if the vehicle suffered any Penetrating hit, but if a Skimmer moved more than 6" on its turn any Penetrating hits were automatically downgraded to Glancing, so most transports were functionally worthless but Wave Serpents and Devilfish were supremely spammable.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I've seen people make all sorts of references along the lines of 'the good old days', or airing old grievances. I've heard lots about 2nd, 3rd and 5th ed (my first game was at the tail end of 5th just before the start of 6th).
But I almost never see people refer to 4th ed at all. Why is this, was it bad?

One simple factor is that comparatively few people were playing it.

The 2005 - 2007/2008 time were dog days with GW occasionally actually writing red numbers (as opposed to just slightly less than record profits as they did in 2012/2013 to 2013/2014, when the big GW's broke debate rolled around). 5th Edition under the early Kirby was a rebound, bringing GW out of the slump, thus it was many people's first taste of 40K (aside from the old times who had been round for 2nd/3rd).

Sunny Side Up wrote:

The 2005 - 2007/2008 time were dog days with GW occasionally actually writing red numbers (as opposed to just slightly less than record profits as they did in 2012/2013 to 2013/2014, when the big GW's broke debate rolled around). 5th Edition under the early Kirby was a rebound, bringing GW out of the slump, thus it was many people's first taste of 40K (aside from the old times who had been round for 2nd/3rd).

I never knew that, it makes the cries of "GW's going under!" that were everywhere towards the end of 7th seem a little silly.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:

The 2005 - 2007/2008 time were dog days with GW occasionally actually writing red numbers (as opposed to just slightly less than record profits as they did in 2012/2013 to 2013/2014, when the big GW's broke debate rolled around). 5th Edition under the early Kirby was a rebound, bringing GW out of the slump, thus it was many people's first taste of 40K (aside from the old times who had been round for 2nd/3rd).

I never knew that, it makes the cries of "GW's going under!" that were everywhere towards the end of 7th seem a little silly.

hrm, GW slumped hard with 7th, 40k lost the spot of top tabletop miniatures game for the first time in a literal generation to Xwing (not sure if they have clawed that back or not), and saw revenues hit inflation adjusted lows not matched since GW's rise in the mid 90's. The frustrations with 7E were well justified. GW's issue during the 4E era was that theyd invested heavily in LotR, and that bubble started to burst during 4E (movies came out 2001-2003, 4E lasted 2004-2008), and thats also about the same time they cut things like Bitz ordering and codex cycle releases were a 6-15 month wait between books.

I started in third. In some ways, fourth was a big step forward - gone was the 'rhino rush' of third ed, and screening, for example. However, fourth had some issues in the core rules - skimmers were a bit bonkers (tau skimmers did quite well in fourth, but eldar skimmers were ridiculous), independent character status could be abused a bit, and consolidation into cc ('rolling up a flank') from cc basically meant that 'deathstar' assault units almost had free reign, unless yo could take them out in the one or two turns it took for them to get there.

Overall though, the rules were 'ok'. Not terrible. Not brilliant. But workable.

Some of the codices were ridiculous though (typical for a gw game). There were some eldar builds of that era (especially spamming holostone falcons) that were ridiculous, and iron warriors broke the back of the edition. Other codices suffered at the other end of the power spectrum.

One big difference to the current era though, and one I miss, is there were No allies. You got what was in your codex. And that was it Your marines couldn't supplement themselves with guardsmen etc. The power curve was a lot less as well. The biggest tank on the board was a land raider, the meanest monstrous creature was a carnifex, or maybe a wraithlord. And probably the biggest gun available was either the bright lance or the rail gun (mathematically speaking, both cracked the hardest armour on a 4+).

Different era in a lot of ways.

^ you mean the biggest tank was the Monolith, the nastiest MC the Nightbringer, and Space Marines could supplement themselves with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers/Adeptus Arbites.

Deadnight wrote:
I started in third. In some ways, fourth was a big step forward - gone was the 'rhino rush' of third ed, and screening, for example. However, fourth had some issues in the core rules - skimmers were a bit bonkers (tau skimmers did quite well in fourth, but eldar skimmers were ridiculous), independent character status could be abused a bit, and consolidation into cc ('rolling up a flank') from cc basically meant that 'deathstar' assault units almost had free reign, unless yo could take them out in the one or two turns it took for them to get there.

Overall though, the rules were 'ok'. Not terrible. Not brilliant. But workable.

Some of the codices were ridiculous though (typical for a gw game). There were some eldar builds of that era (especially spamming holostone falcons) that were ridiculous, and iron warriors broke the back of the edition. Other codices suffered at the other end of the power spectrum.

One big difference to the current era though, and one I miss, is there were No allies. You got what was in your codex. And that was it Your marines couldn't supplement themselves with guardsmen etc. The power curve was a lot less as well. The biggest tank on the board was a land raider, the meanest monstrous creature was a carnifex, or maybe a wraithlord. And probably the biggest gun available was either the bright lance or the rail gun (mathematically speaking, both cracked the hardest armour on a 4+).

Different era in a lot of ways.

Ah yes the pre-Forgeworld days! I remember being scared and wowed by a Landraider, a Monolith, or multiple Carnifexes. Granted, we were in high school and early college so couldn't afford crazy kits like we can now. I remember people hating on my friend taking 3 Wraithlords in his army. That seems quite tame this days doesn't it? Also forgot about Iron Warriors and Obliterator spam as well in 4th. Them getting a 4th heavy choice when everyone was limited to 3 and one of them being a Basilisk in combo with the Defiler which was also indirect fire. I remember my Tyranids in 4th edition getting crushed by Assault Cannon Marine spam or Iron Warrior spam so not all is rosy. However, there was a charm to 4th in that the overall power level was lower and there was no allies. It was more a skirmish game and more thematic. Although what was the biggest complaint back then? Everyone wanted to play cross-faction armies/detachments like today

It all comes full circle haha...just live and adapt!

 Insectum7 wrote:
^ you mean the biggest tank was the Monolith, the nastiest MC the Nightbringer, and Space Marines could supplement themselves with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers/Adeptus Arbites.

Wait what? No, the nastiest MC was the carnifex. better saves, more attacks and more strength, iirc. You can also spam it. Can't spam the Nightbringer.
The nightbringer may have looked scary, but it really wasn't that impressive. It's still only a 4+ save.

Is there even stats for nightbringer in 8th? Or did that ship sail?

I remember getting destroyed by him whenever I went against him.....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I just looked. It does exist in 8th. It's now an elite choice and has been neutered compared to 4th.

Basically, 4th had two different phases of codex design.

There was the late 3.5 phase with lots of customization, including the Space Marine codex with chapter traits, and the "buildabear" Carnifex Codex Tyranids...then there was the Gav Chaos Codex.

Deadnight wrote:One big difference to the current era though, and one I miss, is there were No allies. You got what was in your codex. And that was it Your marines couldn't supplement themselves with guardsmen etc. The power curve was a lot less as well.

Incorrect. Allies just were codex-specific to the Daemonhunters and then the Witch Hunters.

MagicJuggler wrote:Basically, 4th had two different phases of codex design.

There was the late 3.5 phase with lots of customization, including the Space Marine codex with chapter traits, and the "buildabear" Carnifex Codex Tyranids...then there was the Gav Chaos Codex.

Oh, the "Blue Period" started before that Chaos Marines Codex, and included the Eldar and Dark Angels before all the Daemons were simplified.

overall I consider it the best edition, I like it a helluva lot better than the next 3 and overwhelmingly better than 8th, but I think even 7th is better than 8th.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Basically, 4th had two different phases of codex design.

There was the late 3.5 phase with lots of customization, including the Space Marine codex with chapter traits, and the "buildabear" Carnifex Codex Tyranids...then there was the Gav Chaos Codex.

The build a bear Tyranids was absolutely a joy for me personally. Being to take almost any weapon and armor them however you want was awesome. Made roster building and explanations to opponents a bit more tedious. But it created some really cool looking armies and who doesn't want to tailor units to exactly your profile. People still really preferred cheap stuff, but being able to give your gaunts initiative or strength was pretty cool. Just as many dakkafexes and flying tyrants though as today, so that has never changed!

Oh how can I forget Lictors!!!! They had infiltrate but it worked differently than standard Army Book infiltrate. They basically had to deploy in terrain but had to be in a specific terrain piece before the game. I always remember having to tell a neutral 3rd party or scribbling on a piece of paper and making a quick map of where your lictor was! Priceless ha! Lictors could obviously then charge their target right after showing up on the table. Honestly, the model was pretty crappy stats wise and damage wise but it seemed so cool and played psychological tricks on newbies. Usually, they just deterred a devastator squad from setting up in a certain terrain piece.

Oh in this current era of Dark Reaper hate...remember when Dark Reapers were pretty crap with Strength 5 AP 3 and only the Exarch could take a basic missile launcher? People preferred Devastators over Dark reapers since Reapers were more expensive and had 0 ablative bodies. I never thought Eldar was that great in that edition because most of the Aspect warriors were garbage and pretty much Banshees and maybe Fire Dragons were taken. It was pretty much Starcannon spam and Bright Lances. Open transport cans and shoot them to death.

hoya4life3381 wrote:
I never thought Eldar was that great in that edition because most of the Aspect warriors were garbage and pretty much Banshees and maybe Fire Dragons were taken. It was pretty much Starcannon spam and Bright Lances. Open transport cans and shoot them to death.

That last bit was the hard part that made the Eldar so filthy. You basically couldn't kill the transports.

With most transports, any penetrating hit forced immediate disembarkation and a pinning test. Well, Skimmers that moved at least 6" (and Eldar vehicles were Fast so they could always move the minimum 6" and still fire at full effect without any drawbacks) couldn't be penetrated, so they never had to worry about it (this also overrode and negated the benefit from AP1 making any glancing hit a pen and made them immune to Vehicle Annihilated results from Ordnance weapons that could kill all passengers with no saves). The tradeoff was supposed to be that they were killed on an immobilized result. Well, Eldar had wargear that negated that and allowed them to still move if stunned so you could only ever kill through a glancing hit on a natural 6, and basically the only time you could ever penetrate an Eldar vehicle was to catch it turn 1 before it can move and hope it didn't pass a "hull down" roll to downgrade the hit to a glance. To add to that, vehicles were hit on the facing of assaulting models in CC, so instead of hitting AV10 as in subsequent editions, you hit AV12 most of the time. Then of course, Skimmers could only ever be hit on 6's in CC no matter what (as long as they weren't stunned or immobilized), just because...Skimmers. But wait! Then the Wave Serpent basically made anything higher than S8 count as S8 and melta couldn't get double-pen dice, and the Falcon always took Holofields so you rolled 2d6 and picked the lowest on every glancing hit, so you could only kill or stop the transport 1 in 9 successful hits (1/36 for a kill).

It took something like 81 BS4 Lascannons to kill a Falcon on average, 18 to kill a Wave Serpent (by comparison, a Land Raider or Leman Russ required an average of 13.5 and a Chimera about 5.4, in 8E this averages about 8.5 BS3+ Lascannons, and the Chimera was even more expensive then than it is today after kit). For the classic Tac Sergeant w/Powerfist, it took 324 S8 close combat attacks to kill a Falcon on average

Likewise, the Aspect Warriors weren't total garbage. Fire Dragons were pretty great, and Dire Avengers sporting Bladestorm backed up by a Farseer were solid troops in 4E. Scorpions were functional with Infiltrate, Banshees could actually work (since they could assault out of stationary transports or hide behind area terrain and not be seen and AP3 still meant something) even if they weren't amazing, though Harlequins definitely stole the show. Harlequins were quite terrifying back then.

 Vaktathi wrote:

hoya4life3381 wrote:
I never thought Eldar was that great in that edition because most of the Aspect warriors were garbage and pretty much Banshees and maybe Fire Dragons were taken. It was pretty much Starcannon spam and Bright Lances. Open transport cans and shoot them to death.

That last bit was the hard part that made the Eldar so filthy. You basically couldn't kill the transports.

With most transports, any penetrating hit forced immediate disembarkation and a pinning test. Well, Skimmers that moved at least 6" (and Eldar vehicles were Fast so they could always move the minimum 6" and still fire at full effect without any drawbacks) couldn't be penetrated, so they never had to worry about it (this also overrode and negated the benefit from AP1 making any glancing hit a pen and made them immune to Vehicle Annihilated results from Ordnance weapons that could kill all passengers with no saves). The tradeoff was supposed to be that they were killed on an immobilized result. Well, Eldar had wargear that negated that and allowed them to still move if stunned so you could only ever kill through a glancing hit on a natural 6, and basically the only time you could ever penetrate an Eldar vehicle was to catch it turn 1 before it can move and hope it didn't pass a "hull down" roll to downgrade the hit to a glance. To add to that, vehicles were hit on the facing of assaulting models in CC, so instead of hitting AV10 as in subsequent editions, you hit AV12 most of the time. Then of course, Skimmers could only ever be hit on 6's in CC no matter what (as long as they weren't stunned or immobilized), just because...Skimmers. But wait! Then the Wave Serpent basically made anything higher than S8 count as S8 and melta couldn't get double-pen dice, and the Falcon always took Holofields so you rolled 2d6 and picked the lowest on every glancing hit, so you could only kill or stop the transport 1 in 9 successful hits (1/36 for a kill).

It took something like 81 BS4 Lascannons to kill a Falcon on average, 18 to kill a Wave Serpent (by comparison, a Land Raider or Leman Russ required an average of 13.5 and a Chimera about 5.4, in 8E this averages about 8.5 BS3+ Lascannons, and the Chimera was even more expensive then than it is today after kit). For the classic Tac Sergeant w/Powerfist, it took 324 S8 close combat attacks to kill a Falcon on average

Likewise, the Aspect Warriors weren't total garbage. Fire Dragons were pretty great, and Dire Avengers sporting Bladestorm backed up by a Farseer were solid troops in 4E. Scorpions were functional with Infiltrate, Banshees could actually work (since they could assault out of stationary transports or hide behind area terrain and not be seen and AP3 still meant something) even if they weren't amazing, though Harlequins definitely stole the show. Harlequins were quite terrifying back then.

...Kind of. You could kill the Wave Serpents (the Serpent Shield just prevented things from glancing them on better than a 4+, and they couldn't get holofields, so five lascannon shots would immobilize or kill it), you couldn't kill Falcons, but the tanks were quite expensive and had a pretty hard time killing anything themselves with BS3 and guns that didn't do much to armour. If a Falcon got into a one-on-one duel with almost any tank the game would be over long before either one actually died. (Sending a suicide Falcon into an enemy army to deliver a unit of Fire Dragons that was definitely going to die immediately afterwards was a common tactic, but that was also close to three hundred points, so if it wasn't a Land Raider you were throwing them at it wasn't actually even remotely cost-effective.)

(The 80 BS4 lascannons figure is to kill a Falcon outright, but once you'd immobilized it (which took on average 20 BS4 lascannons) it lost a big chunk of the durability benefits of being a skimmer on the next turn, and it was a lot more of a threat as a transport than from its own weapons.)

Started playing in late 3d Ed.
My memory is hazy, but if I would describe 4th Ed. in one word it would be "bland". Not "boring" or "bad", simply put "bland".
(Or "holofields" as Eldar Falcons only had a 1/36 chance of dying thanks to the moving-skimmer-can-only-be-glanced-rule.)

I generally preferred 5th over 4th if I recall correctly.

Correct Falcons were survivable but didn't do anything and were somewhere like 250-300 points out of 1500 (most common game size) to basically not die but not contribute much. I faced it a few times but never worried about it. I just don't have any Eldar horror stories that I can remember off the top of my head. Dire Avengers were alright but with Armor 4 and still quite expensive didn't quite swarm you and you could take the same anti-marine firepower and mix in a few assault cannons or heavy bolters for AP4. Melee was always an option for a Marin player too against Eldar as Eldar weren't good at all in melee except for Banshees which were overrated honestly with S3. My biggest fear was probably Iyanden with Seer Council and re-roll Fortune saves making that unit basically have a 75% invulnerable save against anything. Wraithlords were quite good from my perspective since they basically did not have damage table unlike Dreadnoughts and other vehicles. But all in all, Eldar was pretty tame and so was IG probably because melee was quite common. Even assaulting out of a stationary Rhino was still kind of worth it. Part of the problem now with Marines is that they just never really fight in melee anymore and can't find ways to earn those points back in multiple phases and a bolter shooting platform will never bring its points back.

My memory of 4th was Marines being good, Iron Warriors (rest of Chaos wasn't great), and Tau being the top armies. Tau wasn't popular at first but man did those Commanders and Broadsides put in work once people figured it out. Dark Eldar could be really really good against Marines yet kind of weak to other armies as to me they seemed to be an anti-marine army with Incubi, Distentegrators, and Bright Lances on all Speeder platforms.

Ah yes 4th edition Tau, progenitor of the "Fish of Fury" strategy.

I think I've heard of 'Fish of Fury' before. Wasn't it something to do with disembarking in front, shooting and then flat putting the devilfish in front of the fire warriors as cover?

 AnomanderRake wrote:


...Kind of. You could kill the Wave Serpents (the Serpent Shield just prevented things from glancing them on better than a 4+

Also you couldn't ever get more than one pen dice (such as with meltaguns)

and they couldn't get holofields, so five lascannon shots would immobilize or kill it), you couldn't kill Falcons, but the tanks were quite expensive

They weren't cheap, but they weren't monstrously expensive, they weren't out of line with battle tank costs of other forces. The Wave Serpent proved significantly more durable to dedicated AT weaponry in conjunction with the Skimmer rules and Eldar wargear than it should have, certainly next to anything on tracks. The Falcon was the epitome of that issue, but the Wave Serpent was pretty bad as well. For about half again what a Chimera would cost after kit, a Wave Serpent would sport more than double its effective firepower, be easily twice as durable, and of course be twice as mobile to boot .

and had a pretty hard time killing anything themselves with BS3 and guns that didn't do much to armour.
If a Falcon got into a one-on-one duel with almost any tank the game would be over long before either one actually died.

The S8 Pulse laser could do a lot to armor, particularly in 4E, and you could get up to seven S6 shots that could be fired along with the pulse laser while moving up to 12", which in 4E was a whole lot of dakka for a tank, point for point that's roughly matching anti-infantry output with a Dakkapredator while being dramatically more effective against enemy armor or MC's too.

hoya4life3381 wrote:
Correct Falcons were survivable but didn't do anything and were somewhere like 250-300 points out of 1500

Hrm, literally the most expensive Falcon you could buy was 235, most were 185-205. They weren't cheap, but they weren't *that* spendy either.

(most common game size) to basically not die but not contribute much.

They're not lacking in firepower relative to other tanks in the game at that point. Again, point for point they more than outmatch a Dakkapred or, Emperor forbid, a Russ attempting to flail about Two S6 weapons with a 2 shot S8 AP2 laser was a sweet package in 4E.

I faced it a few times but never worried about it. I just don't have any Eldar horror stories that I can remember off the top of my head.

They dominated the GT tables for the last year and a half of the edition with the invinci-skimmers pretty handily, especially in the last 10 months or so of 4E after the CSM book came out and dumped all those armies for the Lash Prince

 n0t_u wrote:

Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again.

Ah, good times! Khorne player here - I remember a Daemon Prince with a berserker glaive chewing through an entire Imperial Guard gunline while my Berzerkers watched in amazement.

 n0t_u wrote:

genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

Ah, bad times. Those pesky genestealers. They were scary.

4th edition was okay as I remember. A little bland. What I remember most about it was that it was the era of massively overpowered Forge World units and assault armies outflanking on from the table edge, and then assaulting. I seriously hated my nephew's genestealer list because of that!

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I think I've heard of 'Fish of Fury' before. Wasn't it something to do with disembarking in front, shooting and then flat putting the devilfish in front of the fire warriors as cover?

Not quite. In 4th, your own skimmers didn't count as blocking Line of Sight, though they did for enemy shooting (under the rationalisation that it would go high for your guys to fire then come back down). So you'd drive a Devilfish up to the enemy, drop out Fire Warriors behind it in double tap range and open up on the enemy. Then, due to the shape of the Devilfish, the 6" move and 6" charge whilst not being allowed to move within 1" of an enemy model without charging it, your fire warriors would count as out of LOS for the enemy shooting phase and the enemy wouldn't be able to charge them as moving around the devilfish took more than 12" of movement if you were staying 1" away from it.

It was very effective if you could make it work, but getting your placement wrong left you sitting pretty vulnerable to a countercharge.

Might have got the skimmers blocking line of sight for the enemy wrong, don't have my 4th ed rulebook on me to check.

No they blocked enemy LoS. They also couldn't be charged if they moved a certain distance. Cue people moving their devilfishes in a V formation; too wide to circle around and they moved far enough that you couldn't charge. Oh and all pen hits became glancing hits so even shooting wasn't that good of a solution (and honestly, you want to try and out-shoot the TAU!?). However skimmers in general were problematic. A Space Marine Landspeeder would send shivers down people's spines, especially since it could mount either a multi-melta or an assault cannon (which had the old rending rules that worked on To Hit instead of To Wound).

Ironically I think the only skimmer that wasn't feared was the monolith, since you could flat out ignore it and shoot the necrons and it would disappear with the crons when they dropped below 25%.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
No they blocked enemy LoS. They also couldn't be charged if they moved a certain distance. Cue people moving their devilfishes in a V formation; too wide to circle around and they moved far enough that you couldn't charge. Oh and all pen hits became glancing hits so even shooting wasn't that good of a solution (and honestly, you want to try and out-shoot the TAU!?). However skimmers in general were problematic. A Space Marine Landspeeder would send shivers down people's spines, especially since it could mount either a multi-melta or an assault cannon (which had the old rending rules that worked on To Hit instead of To Wound).

Ironically I think the only skimmer that wasn't feared was the monolith, since you could flat out ignore it and shoot the necrons and it would disappear with the crons when they dropped below 25%.

Skimmers were definitely considered better than their land-based "tank" counterparts for all the reasons you listed.

Was 4th roughly the time that the games started increasing from 1500 to 1850? Or was that later? Again my memory is hazy.

I remember 1500 exclusively in 3rd and an occasional 2000 point game if people wanted to play Terminators, Landraiders, Monoliths, and other super goodies.

I mean it just come down to preference. 40k was a lot more skirmish, more unit based, and only allowed 1 faction. Small-scale war. There was a certain charm to that setup or perhaps it's just all nostalgia. We all imagined and wanted multi-detachment armies that we have now though.

To me pre-Forgeworld and post-Forgeworld really changed the scale of the game itself.

Wasn't there an edition that removed movement statistics? Was that 4th?

I think I quit the game then. I played 2nd ed and a bit of 3rd and then must have left. I continued to buy some models around 5th edition and paint them though, but didn't bother with the game again until now.

Insectum7 wrote:^ you mean the biggest tank was the Monolith, the nastiest MC the Nightbringer, and Space Marines could supplement themselves with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers/Adeptus Arbites.

The biggest tank was a Baneblade (since they've been in 28mm 40k since 2nd Edition ...), the nastiest MC damn near anything with spammed Tyranid upgrades, and armies could include Sisters of Battle, Space Marines, Imperial Guard, and Inquisitors all in one blob.

hoya4life3381 wrote:

Deadnight wrote:
I started in third. In some ways, fourth was a big step forward - gone was the 'rhino rush' of third ed, and screening, for example. However, fourth had some issues in the core rules - skimmers were a bit bonkers (tau skimmers did quite well in fourth, but eldar skimmers were ridiculous), independent character status could be abused a bit, and consolidation into cc ('rolling up a flank') from cc basically meant that 'deathstar' assault units almost had free reign, unless yo could take them out in the one or two turns it took for them to get there.

Overall though, the rules were 'ok'. Not terrible. Not brilliant. But workable.

Some of the codices were ridiculous though (typical for a gw game). There were some eldar builds of that era (especially spamming holostone falcons) that were ridiculous, and iron warriors broke the back of the edition. Other codices suffered at the other end of the power spectrum.

One big difference to the current era though, and one I miss, is there were No allies. You got what was in your codex. And that was it Your marines couldn't supplement themselves with guardsmen etc. The power curve was a lot less as well. The biggest tank on the board was a land raider, the meanest monstrous creature was a carnifex, or maybe a wraithlord. And probably the biggest gun available was either the bright lance or the rail gun (mathematically speaking, both cracked the hardest armour on a 4+).

Different era in a lot of ways.

Ah yes the pre-Forgeworld days! I remember being scared and wowed by a Landraider, a Monolith, or multiple Carnifexes. Granted, we were in high school and early college so couldn't afford crazy kits like we can now. I remember people hating on my friend taking 3 Wraithlords in his army. That seems quite tame this days doesn't it? Also forgot about Iron Warriors and Obliterator spam as well in 4th. Them getting a 4th heavy choice when everyone was limited to 3 and one of them being a Basilisk in combo with the Defiler which was also indirect fire. I remember my Tyranids in 4th edition getting crushed by Assault Cannon Marine spam or Iron Warrior spam so not all is rosy. However, there was a charm to 4th in that the overall power level was lower and there was no allies. It was more a skirmish game and more thematic. Although what was the biggest complaint back then? Everyone wanted to play cross-faction armies/detachments like today

It all comes full circle haha...just live and adapt!

I bought my first Baneblade in 3rd after the Imperial Armour Volume 1 floppy book came out. It wasn't that expensive - certainly moreso than any other 40k kit ever, but for a beautiful centerpiece model I was able to save a couple of paychecks worth of spending money and then grab it.

hoya4life3381 wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
No they blocked enemy LoS. They also couldn't be charged if they moved a certain distance. Cue people moving their devilfishes in a V formation; too wide to circle around and they moved far enough that you couldn't charge. Oh and all pen hits became glancing hits so even shooting wasn't that good of a solution (and honestly, you want to try and out-shoot the TAU!?). However skimmers in general were problematic. A Space Marine Landspeeder would send shivers down people's spines, especially since it could mount either a multi-melta or an assault cannon (which had the old rending rules that worked on To Hit instead of To Wound).

Ironically I think the only skimmer that wasn't feared was the monolith, since you could flat out ignore it and shoot the necrons and it would disappear with the crons when they dropped below 25%.

Skimmers were definitely considered better than their land-based "tank" counterparts for all the reasons you listed.

Was 4th roughly the time that the games started increasing from 1500 to 1850? Or was that later? Again my memory is hazy.

I remember 1500 exclusively in 3rd and an occasional 2000 point game if people wanted to play Terminators, Landraiders, Monoliths, and other super goodies.

I mean it just come down to preference. 40k was a lot more skirmish, more unit based, and only allowed 1 faction. Small-scale war. There was a certain charm to that setup or perhaps it's just all nostalgia. We all imagined and wanted multi-detachment armies that we have now though.

To me pre-Forgeworld and post-Forgeworld really changed the scale of the game itself.

4th was the one that started promoting 1850 but I think it was in 3rd that 1500 was made the "standard". I remember one online article mentioning that the game itself was ideally balanced (when they actually cared about balance) for 1500 at the time, and even 2000 was stretching it a bit.

TarkinLarson wrote:Wasn't there an edition that removed movement statistics? Was that 4th?

I think I quit the game then. I played 2nd ed and a bit of 3rd and then must have left. I continued to buy some models around 5th edition and paint them though, but didn't bother with the game again until now.

3rd edition was the one that removed it I think, 4th was essentially a patchjob on top of 3rd.

Yeah 3rd removed the M stat from 2nd and standardised everything into 6"-12"-18"-24" bands.

Marines used to only move 4"

One of the main issues with Skimmers was their near-indestructability, combined with Tank Shock, combined with other vehicles being weak. An Eldar player could go second, own one objective, and use Tank Shock to contest enemy objectives (or even claim them if the enemy was pushed off).

Such shenanigans were technically possible in 5th but in practice they didn't work since it was the edition of massed light mech.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Basically, 4th had two different phases of codex design.

There was the late 3.5 phase with lots of customization, including the Space Marine codex with chapter traits, and the "buildabear" Carnifex Codex Tyranids...then there was the Gav Chaos Codex.

Not just buildabear fexes, buildabear almost any unit in the codex! It was glorious. Want melee warriors? Cool, keep them BS2 (5+) and save some points. Do you want them as elite shock troops or as melee chaff, options aplenty. I still have a squad of metal gargoyles lying around that I was going to equip with devourers. And then along came the true great devourer, cruddace with his 5th and 6th codices. Nid players don't speak of 4th because the memory is too painful

Although I am really happy with the current buildafex!

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Insectum7 wrote:^ you mean the biggest tank was the Monolith, the nastiest MC the Nightbringer, and Space Marines could supplement themselves with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers/Adeptus Arbites.

The biggest tank was a Baneblade (since they've been in 28mm 40k since 2nd Edition ...), the nastiest MC damn near anything with spammed Tyranid upgrades, and armies could include Sisters of Battle, Space Marines, Imperial Guard, and Inquisitors all in one blob.

Gonna pull the Armorcast/ Forge World card, huh? Well I'll pull the "technically the biggest tank in the game is whatever you built using the Vehicle Design Rules." My brother built an Ork monstrosity we call the "Battlemansion", which dwarfs a Baneblade.

I would be surprised if a roided-out Tyranid MC could take the Nightbringer though. Also worth mentioning the roided-out Daemon Princes, some of those could get pretty nasty. But the C'tan's had the hefty advantage of being T8 and ignoring all invuln saves.


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 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
No they blocked enemy LoS. They also couldn't be charged if they moved a certain distance.

I'm pretty sure skimmers did not block LOS. I think you could charge them but they could only be hit on 6's.

Amusingly a dirt cheap Dreadaxe Daemon Prince could floor the Nightbringer. The Dreadaxe essentially had the old Poison rule on a 4+ (completely negating the Nightbringer's T8) and also ignored invul saves. Combined with the DP's innate MC rule, it gave the Ctan no saves. And the DP could be modded to go before the ctan.

shortymcnostrill wrote:

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Basically, 4th had two different phases of codex design.

There was the late 3.5 phase with lots of customization, including the Space Marine codex with chapter traits, and the "buildabear" Carnifex Codex Tyranids...then there was the Gav Chaos Codex.

Not just buildabear fexes, buildabear almost any unit in the codex! It was glorious. Want melee warriors? Cool, keep them BS2 (5+) and save some points. Do you want them as elite shock troops or as melee chaff, options aplenty. I still have a squad of metal gargoyles lying around that I was going to equip with devourers. And then along came the true great devourer, cruddace with his 5th and 6th codices. Nid players don't speak of 4th because the memory is too painful

Although I am really happy with the current buildafex!

As a 3rd edition to 4th edition Tyranid player, i wholeheartedly loved that codex and probably to me was my favorite Codex ever. Giving your own Tyranids their own unique paint scheme, then being able to customize which bio-morphs they had to your heart desire, then modeling the bio-morphs onto your models really made for totally unique armies. It truly made you feel like the Hive Queen and shaping your force in your own image.

Plus I don't remember it ever being considered horribly overpowered. I mean the Flying Tyrant was good but no invulnerable save meant it was reasonable back then with so much armor piercing. Carnifexes actually were good with Devourer dakka or with Venom cannon builds. The rest of the codex was honestly pretty average since bolters killed the rest of your army including Genestealers, Gaunts, etc. Warriors had a weird niche and Zoanthropes were okay but not great. It was really limited line of models so I am quite happy how they have expanded Tyarnids so much since then. I remember Raveners came out and that was like the first new unit Tyranids had in a long time...

I know others may have horror stories about Eldar skimmers but I guess I never did as a Tyranid player. Venom cannons could only glance anyways! What's the difference . So a Strength 10 Venom Cannon with 2 shots at BS3 was pretty much auto glancing a ARM 12 Falcon/Wave Serpeant every turn. This pretty much mean the vehicle was not shooting and even with Holostones you would eventually get an Immobilized or Weapon Destroyed roll. I probably would have been more frustrated shooting at Eldar vehicles with Lascannons/Missiles though I admit. Corner case for Tyranids back in the day!

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Amusingly a dirt cheap Dreadaxe Daemon Prince could floor the Nightbringer. The Dreadaxe essentially had the old Poison rule on a 4+ (completely negating the Nightbringer's T8) and also ignored invul saves. Combined with the DP's innate MC rule, it gave the Ctan no saves. And the DP could be modded to go before the ctan.

Ooh, that's a possibility. Better give that guy Eternal Warrior though in case that Nightbringer lives and gets a hit off at S 10. I don't recall how many attacks the DP could get with the Dread Axe. NB had 5 wounds.

And a 24" Lascannon.

I think a Statured prince started at 4 and could slowly go up depending on what you gave him. However that wouldn't make him that dirt cheap I guess (although still cheaper than the NB, due to at the time everything having an absolute top limit to how much points they can spend in the armoury, and I think the Chaos Lord/DP could only go up to a total of 250 points I think).

The Dreadaxe though made the DP ridiculously powerful for the cheap cost, since if I remember you could comfortably make a 160-ish point prince with wings, axe and stature and it can pretty much delete anything up to twice it's point cost and had a good chance of actually surviving. Combined with the "Consolidate into combat"rule and you can see why the 3.5 dex was considered one of the most broken ones.

That might have still been a fight. I forget the comparative WS but Daemonic Stature I think meant the character could be picked out for shooting purposes.

With Runes, wings, mutation (more attack), CCW, Stature and the Dreadaxe, a DP above would have been 171 points (the 1 is for the CCW). Rune is the EW gift so that would basically let him tank hits, but it would still be a close match as both sides (due to having the exact same WS) would be basically nickle and diming each other (the DP has slightly more attacks to offset the Nightbringer's higher To Wound roll). The Nightbringer has a slight edge as he has innately more wounds and the DP only has marginally more attack.

The DP can offset this by taking the Mark of Khorne and Daemonic Essence. In which case it's more or less a tossup to who'd win, although the prince is still cheaper than the Nightbringer.

However both still die to ratling snipers.

I really liked the terrain rules, true line of sight has probably been the number 1 most argued about issue i've seen going on at tables and being able to just whip out a laser level and see if the line goes through the terrain base or not without any talk of tree branches or what part of the tyranid counts as a weapon or a limb, i loved that.

It was otherwise mostly just third edition but with a big chunk of the new improvements creating new problems. For instance i think 4th was the edition that let you scum wound allocation with diverse loadouts. As in, a unit of 4 wraiths could take one with whip coils, one with a particle caster, one with both, and one with nothing, and assign 2 wounds to each before allocating a lethal 3rd wound to remove a model because each unique loadout counted as a separate wound pool like an attached character.

It was also when they first got on the cycle of doing editions roughly every 3 years, where as 3rd went on for 6 years, so it felt like we were moving on to 5th before we really spent a ton of time in 4th.

I really liked 4th Ed and felt it was an upgrade to 3rd, and felt the company genuinely was trying to improve its game. So I looked forward to 5th but was sorely disappointed. Sure, many of 4th's problems were fixed, but in typical GW style many more stupid rules were introduced (wound allocation shenanigans, bizarre true line of sight changes, overreaction in fixing the vehicle damage tables from to harsh in 4th too ridiculously resilient in 5th, etc.). Since then my group realized that GW changes things for change's sake, and so we've made our own rules set taking bits out subsequent editions as they've come.

I don't believe there is anything from 8th Ed we have adopted.

 malamis wrote:
I started in 4th and still have the 4th edition rulebook on my shelf after chucking everything since into the recycler. 4th was alright; 8th is better, the bits between were the teething problems we had to get to it.

8th is 4th with the following improvements:

Characters can actually be killed
Turn 1 charge is possible but a serious challenge, as it should be
Consolidate into combat doesn't shut down an entire gunline
Blast Weapons that aren't a total chore/waste of time to resolve.
Chaos Close Combat isn't unbeatable
Scoring/Objectives much more sensible
VASTLY better internal balance per codex, which is saying something about how bad 4th was, not how good 8th is. It's likely that the only non mono-build army of the era was Chaos, which is part of why they liked it so much
Pre-measuring ranges is allowed
All kinds of vehicles are useful
The AP System doesn't render entire codex options irrelevant
SPLIT FIRE

And the following regressions:
The Cover System
The loss of outflank
The loss of comparative weapon skill (I do miss this)
Loss of Reserves walking on (this too)

As for close combat, i've gone on a proper good rant about it here. The Big deal to emphasise is that shooting attacks and meelee at the initative step were all resolved together, but the player who owned the models being targeted assigned the *weapons* that scored wounds to his own models; so you could take high strength, good ap wounds on ablative shields, and bolters on 2+ armour saves all the day long. In CC this was even worse as power weapons were straight up ignore armour saves meaning PWeps were a very expensive gamble. This was also the era before challenges, where characters could simply swap entourages whenever they liked and never take a wound during the course of the game.

Just to clarify

Chaos was not mono build infact it was the least mono build chaos ever made, when you got to tourney level then yes it got mono build, but the sheer amount of choices and options and viable units were a conversion, player and painters wet dream, it is the standard by which every codex should be set.

4th edition Chaos? The Lash Prince, Plague marine, and Obliterator edition? It was one of the most mono-build codexs! I genuinely am confused by what people are saying about the 4th edition Gavdex.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
4th edition Chaos? The Lash Prince, Plague marine, and Obliterator edition? It was one of the most mono-build codexs! I genuinely am confused by what people are saying about the 4th edition Gavdex.

I think maybe there's confusion in that the 3.5 Codex ran most of the life of the edition, the Chaos codex that was actually released during 4th edition was only released about 9 or 10 months before 5E dropped.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
4th edition Chaos? The Lash Prince, Plague marine, and Obliterator edition? It was one of the most mono-build codexs! I genuinely am confused by what people are saying about the 4th edition Gavdex.

Ah 4th ed chaos, not 3.5 gothca

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
With Runes, wings, mutation (more attack), CCW, Stature and the Dreadaxe, a DP above would have been 171 points (the 1 is for the CCW). Rune is the EW gift so that would basically let him tank hits, but it would still be a close match as both sides (due to having the exact same WS) would be basically nickle and diming each other (the DP has slightly more attacks to offset the Nightbringer's higher To Wound roll). The Nightbringer has a slight edge as he has innately more wounds and the DP only has marginally more attack.

The DP can offset this by taking the Mark of Khorne and Daemonic Essence. In which case it's more or less a tossup to who'd win, although the prince is still cheaper than the Nightbringer.

However both still die to ratling snipers.

Ah hah! I didn't think it would be easy.

Here's hoping they do a daemon-primarch sized C'tan shard and beef it to all get-out. I miss my Crons.

I remember liking most of the 4e rules, though I do remember griping about a fair number now long forgotten to me. People keep mentioning the terrain rules, but I don't remember what they are - in 3e, you got Cover Save OR Armor Save, depending on which was better. I never liked that approach, and I don't think it changed in 4e. I know some of us had a local house rule letting you do both.

I do remember liking the Guard "Doctrine" system in the 3.5e/4e codex. Wasn't supremely well designed but the idea was Good. Liked that we had more customization options, too.

I stopped playing in 4e, sometime around late 2006 if I recall correctly. Just wasn't very many locals playing, and I started to explore a number of different systems.

As a general thing I'd say I liked how I remember 4e doing many things over 8e, though 8e has some improvements compared to what I remember 4e being.

I just really miss a number of the old 4e era Forge World models, now :(

Nevelon wrote:From a personal POV, I just didn’t get in many games of 4th. My FLGS had closed, and it was during a rough patch in my life financially.

Same; I did most of my play in 3e; the FLGS was struggling pretty badly even then - both financially and with how bad their playerbase could be. Very much an "in" crowed.

hoya4life3381 wrote:Was 4th roughly the time that the games started increasing from 1500 to 1850? Or was that later? Again my memory is hazy.

I definitely remember 3e and 4e having a lot of 2k lists on this very forum.

5th was the first edition I started playing. I was in middle school at the time and was drawn in because of dawn of war dark crusade, and seeing mods like the Tabletop Round-Up mod. Others may of also been drawn in, which would've put them into 5th ed as well.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
4th edition Chaos? The Lash Prince, Plague marine, and Obliterator edition? It was one of the most mono-build codexs! I genuinely am confused by what people are saying about the 4th edition Gavdex.

I think maybe there's confusion in that the 3.5 Codex ran most of the life of the edition, the Chaos codex that was actually released during 4th edition was only released about 9 or 10 months before 5E dropped.

Agreed: there wasn't really a 4th edition CSM codex . There was the 3.5, then the next was a blue cover, and hence most people think of it as a 5th edition codex (even though it dropped before the end of 4th edition).

 corpuschain wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
4th edition Chaos? The Lash Prince, Plague marine, and Obliterator edition? It was one of the most mono-build codexs! I genuinely am confused by what people are saying about the 4th edition Gavdex.

I think maybe there's confusion in that the 3.5 Codex ran most of the life of the edition, the Chaos codex that was actually released during 4th edition was only released about 9 or 10 months before 5E dropped.

Agreed: there wasn't really a 4th edition CSM codex . There was the 3.5, then the next was a blue cover, and hence most people think of it as a 5th edition codex (even though it dropped before the end of 4th edition).

It was sort of the same with the 4th ed Ork codex. It was released so close to 5th ed I thought it was a 5th ed book for a while. In fact, both the codex and 5th ed were released in the same year - 2008.
In fact, 4th ed is also marked by several armies going without codices.
Dark Eldar were stuck with the 3rd ed codex until 5th ed
Necrons were stuck with the 3rd ed codex until 5th ed
Witchhunters / SoB were stuck with the 3rd ed book and had to wait until 5th ed
Daemonhunters / grey ditto
Imperial Guard did not have a 4th ed codex, but they did have a 3.5 dex

Dark Eldar went so long without a codex that people honestly thought they were going to get squatted, then lo and behold a bunch of model updates and a codex later they improved.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Dark Eldar went so long without a codex that people honestly thought they were going to get squatted, then lo and behold a bunch of model updates and a codex later they improved.

12 YEARS!

I am still angry about them removing rules for Vect.

 Actinium wrote:
I For instance i think 4th was the edition that let you scum wound allocation with diverse loadouts. As in, a unit of 4 wraiths could take one with whip coils, one with a particle caster, one with both, and one with nothing, and assign 2 wounds to each before allocating a lethal 3rd wound to remove a model because each unique loadout counted as a separate wound pool like an attached character.

That was 5th. The 4th edition wound allocation was not very abuseable.

Yep that was the abomination that 5th brought in. Personified by Draigo paladin build and nob bikers.

 docdoom77 wrote:

 Actinium wrote:
I For instance i think 4th was the edition that let you scum wound allocation with diverse loadouts. As in, a unit of 4 wraiths could take one with whip coils, one with a particle caster, one with both, and one with nothing, and assign 2 wounds to each before allocating a lethal 3rd wound to remove a model because each unique loadout counted as a separate wound pool like an attached character.

That was 5th. The 4th edition wound allocation was not very abuseable.

Yeah, 4th ed wound allocation was pretty straightforward. You just take casualties from the back, controlling player decides, iirc.

4th was super awesome for wound allocation.

Defending player picks who dies, unless the attacking player does more wounds than there are models in the unit, and then the controlling player picks where those wounds go.

So say I'm shooting at a 10 man Guardsman squad with a plasma gun and a lascannon with a bunch of Heavy Bolters.

If I get 16 hits and wounds, then the controlling player allocated the first 10 and I get to allocate the last 6, if I recall correctly.

The rule was called "torrent of fire" and it felt like a good abstraction between "soldiers will pick out the scariest enemy weapons where possible" and "that doesn't mean they won't hit anything else in the process"

Actually it was take casualties from anywhere in the squad unless there were more wounds than remaining models. In that case, the attacker could pick which models (with the number based on the overage wounded) needed to make saves.

EDIT: Ninja'd, basically!

I remember Nob Bikers. They were so good. Being able to take 10 wounds and not lose a single model was dope.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I remember Nob Bikers. They were so good. Being able to take 10 wounds and not lose a single model was dope.

Yeah 5th edition was pretty rad.

But we're talking about 4th edition, and IIRC Nob Bikers didn't have that problem. Or if they did, they were still garbage. I don't remember them being a thing till 5th.

Nob Bikers were technically released at the end of 4th edition (in fact I think the Orks were the last codex) but gained infamy in 5th due to the change to wound allocation. Before that you had to remove entire models first depending on proximity I think (couldn't remember, I never played with multi-wound units during 4th).

In 4E, with multi wound models, the only issue was that you couldnt spread wounds, you had to keep stacking on one until it died and then you could allocate to the next model. Aside from that there were no restrictions.

Still the best all around wound allocation system the game has ever had.

 Vaktathi wrote:
In 4E, with multi wound models, the only issue was that you couldnt spread wounds, you had to keep stacking on one until it died and then you could allocate to the next model. Aside from that there were no restrictions.

Still the best all around wound allocation system the game has ever had.

To be fair, it's essentially the same as 8th's without the Torrent of Fire rule.

Thank god 8th is back to that. I hated fiddling with individual model placement and characters tanking wounds for units. Waste of gameplay time if you ask me.

One thing I havn't see anyone mention is the restrictions on special characters. You where generally only allowed to field special characters in games of 1500p or more. This was to stop them from dominating low scale games. Also IIRC many special characters only allowed you to field them "with your opponents concent" to justify their power. It was a little weird because no one would say "no, I don't want to fight Calgar, field something else". 5th approximately trippled the number of special characters per codex and put most of the previous army wide rules on characters instead. Giving you a certain character tax on special rules.

That too. In 3rd and 4th, Special characters were never considered for proper play and were more narrative figures intended for special events and such, although most people didn't have a problem with them. Some characters were campaign exclusive and sometimes had even their models discontinued after the event was over (while I can't recall any 40k characters off the top of my head, Valten from Fantasy was one such character where his model was only available for a limited time, and he was around the same time as 3rd and 4th).

In Canada, 4th was the time when they were doing 10% (or more) price hikes every year while the local currency climbed and climbed in value so in the end anyone who ordered online from the UK or the US could get their GW stuff for less what a local store paid for it wholesale. So many game stores either closed or switched away from GW being their primary seller during that period. Many GW stores closed during this time as well. And GW Canada was shut down and folded into GW North America.

They eventually relented and did a price reduction on many items around the time of the launch of 5th. During 5th GW North America would also be shut down along with many European national offices following suit during 6th.

4th was alright as a game, but the prices just made it brutal for anyone who didn't have a new collection or didn't know about ordering from UK online stores.

 Insectum7 wrote:
^ you mean the biggest tank was the Monolith, the nastiest MC the Nightbringer, and Space Marines could supplement themselves with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers/Adeptus Arbites.

Forgot about the monolith - in my defence, I played necrons about once during that edition. Nightbringer wasn't a patch on some of the tyranid mc's especially considering his cost. And just having a 4+ inv.

And you are correct about the 4th ed daemonhunters and witch hunters. They were about the only 'allied' options really, and iirc the 'allied foc' was a pretty cut down stub - 1 hq, 2 troops and one or two of the other slots? It was pretty cool, and not all that overpowered (this was before the ward dex for grey knights), although I remember thinking at the time that some sob 'miracles' were ott - specifically they had one that turned bolters to ap3. Heh, that was 'broken'. How times change!

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Dark Eldar went so long without a codex that people honestly thought they were going to get squatted, then lo and behold a bunch of model updates and a codex later they improved.

12 YEARS!

I am still angry about them removing rules for Vect.

Vect was still in the 5th ed codex, he just didn't have a model, it was the 7th ed codex that removed all our characters.

Vect's Dais technically had a model but Vect himself didn't. In 3rd edition Vect couldn't disembark from his dais so they counted as one model. In 5th Vect was a separate Entry and his dais (which was a Raider with near-land raider armor) was a transport for him.

Again my memory between 3rd and 4th is kind of hazy.

We should mention in 3rd edition you played different missions with special rules. Some missions allowed Deep Strike and some allowed Infiltrate. Terminators had Deep Strike and Genestealers had Infiltrate for example. If the mission didn't have Deep Strike or Infiltrate, then your units were setting up standard like everything else. Imagine the uproar today!

DS and Infiltrate was considered an add-on bonus rather than inherent ability.

Was this the same in 4th or had that changed by then?

hoya4life3381 wrote:
Again my memory between 3rd and 4th is kind of hazy.

We should mention in 3rd edition you played different missions with special rules. Some missions allowed Deep Strike and some allowed Infiltrate. Terminators had Deep Strike and Genestealers had Infiltrate for example. If the mission didn't have Deep Strike or Infiltrate, then your units were setting up standard like everything else. Imagine the uproar today!

DS and Infiltrate was considered an add-on bonus rather than inherent ability.

Was this the same in 4th or had that changed by then?

It's only after reading your post that I realised this wasn't the case in 7th! It was so embedded in my head that I didn't realise I was erroneously looking for this in the 7th mission tables!

 amanita wrote:
Actually it was take casualties from anywhere in the squad unless there were more wounds than remaining models. In that case, the attacker could pick which models (with the number based on the overage wounded) needed to make saves.

EDIT: Ninja'd, basically!

Also the casualties had to be from the range and los of the weapon they were taken from. If you were careful with it you could snipe characters out of units (if they happened to be leading from the front) with short ranged punchy weapons like Meltas.

Lost many a character that way before young me realised why. It was tricky to pull off though due to lack of premeasuring.

hoya4life3381 wrote:
Again my memory between 3rd and 4th is kind of hazy.

We should mention in 3rd edition you played different missions with special rules. Some missions allowed Deep Strike and some allowed Infiltrate. Terminators had Deep Strike and Genestealers had Infiltrate for example. If the mission didn't have Deep Strike or Infiltrate, then your units were setting up standard like everything else. Imagine the uproar today!

DS and Infiltrate was considered an add-on bonus rather than inherent ability.

Was this the same in 4th or had that changed by then?

Half and half. Early 4th edition codexes and 3.5 edition codexes still had "if the mission allowed it", with CSM being unique at the time for having Daemons that always entered via deepstrike (combined with icons and daemons having the unique ability to charge out of deepstrike, this gave the CSM something unique in the only form of teleporting and effective troops, which is why the GKs were made specifically to counter them). Lictors were feared for a similar reason (although their effect was somewhat different from DS and Infiltrate, but being able to count on having it 100% instead of conditionally was still a huge boon). It wasn't until late 4th edition (post Black Templars I think) where they started giving units the ability to infiltrate or deepstrike regardless of the mission specs, before completely getting rid of them as mission-specific rules in 5th edition.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
It wasn't until late 4th edition (post Black Templars I think) where they started giving units the ability to infiltrate or deepstrike regardless of the mission specs, before completely getting rid of them as mission-specific rules in 5th edition.

What do you mean post-black Templars? I know they adorned the front of 3rd, so they must have existed. Was this when they got models? Also, when did plastics become the mainstay of the models?

Black Templars only got a campaign-supplement armylist in Codex: Armageddon during 3rd edition. They did not get their own codex until mid-late 4th edition.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Black Templars only got a campaign-supplement armylist in Codex: Armageddon during 3rd edition. They did not get their own codex until mid-late 4th edition.

It wasn't that late in 4th Edition. Late 4th started with the Eldar, also what I call the "Blue Period". It had been out for a while by then. I had started collecting codices some time after the Templars' release.

CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
It wasn't until late 4th edition (post Black Templars I think) where they started giving units the ability to infiltrate or deepstrike regardless of the mission specs, before completely getting rid of them as mission-specific rules in 5th edition.

What do you mean post-black Templars? I know they adorned the front of 3rd, so they must have existed. Was this when they got models? Also, when did plastics become the mainstay of the models?

Basically as Mecha had it - they were just a color scheme for marines. I did Black Templar as my very first 40k army, and I ran them just as straight Marines until I stopped playing them to focus on Guard.

n0t_u wrote:Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

You COULD consolidate into a new combat, but it was a 3" move. Most people forget this, or got it wrong. an advance was 2D6", a consolidation was 3". If you did a sweeping advance, you could be shot by every unit in the opposing army that could shoot your along that pathway. Knowing this, I simply staggered my battle line. ANYBODY who consolidated 2D6" was either woefully ignorant of the rules or was cheating because they knew the OTHER person didn't understand the rules.

 Just Tony wrote:

n0t_u wrote:Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

You COULD consolidate into a new combat, but it was a 3" move. Most people forget this, or got it wrong. an advance was 2D6", a consolidation was 3". If you did a sweeping advance, you could be shot by every unit in the opposing army that could shoot your along that pathway. Knowing this, I simply staggered my battle line. ANYBODY who consolidated 2D6" was either woefully ignorant of the rules or was cheating because they knew the OTHER person didn't understand the rules.

I never understood peoples trouble with the ability to consolidate into new combats.
It never happened in any game I played/saw for the entire edition, not even once.

It happened once at one of my stores, and it was the talk of the evening. After that, you'd see about 8" gaps between units in an army.

 Just Tony wrote:

n0t_u wrote:Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

You COULD consolidate into a new combat, but it was a 3" move. Most people forget this, or got it wrong. an advance was 2D6", a consolidation was 3".

It was 3" unless you got a Massacre result which was D6", which could hamstring you or catapult you.

If you did a sweeping advance, you could be shot by every unit in the opposing army that could shoot your along that pathway. Knowing this, I simply staggered my battle line.

This was the original 3E CC implementation, changed during late 3E Chapter Approved, by 4E the overrun move where you could be shot at didn't exist. in 4E, sweeping advance was just a straight initiative test, not the 2d6" move.

Jbz` wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

n0t_u wrote:Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

You COULD consolidate into a new combat, but it was a 3" move. Most people forget this, or got it wrong. an advance was 2D6", a consolidation was 3". If you did a sweeping advance, you could be shot by every unit in the opposing army that could shoot your along that pathway. Knowing this, I simply staggered my battle line. ANYBODY who consolidated 2D6" was either woefully ignorant of the rules or was cheating because they knew the OTHER person didn't understand the rules.

I never understood peoples trouble with the ability to consolidate into new combats.
It never happened in any game I played/saw for the entire edition, not even once.

Just Tony wrote:It happened once at one of my stores, and it was the talk of the evening. After that, you'd see about 8" gaps between units in an army.

If you guys never, ever, saw a consolidation into a new combat, people weren't playing their armies right. It wasn't as much an issue for relatively elite armies, but for some armies it was monstrously crippling (there are reasons IG were a complete disaster of an army in 4E). There just wasn't enough room to spread out. With my CSM's I could usually manage to do it to an opponent at least once per game, lots of CC units heavily relied on that tactic, there were armies built entirely around its abuse that did very well in GT's during 4th.

Units have to be near each other all the time for various reasons, be they supporting other units, screening other units, forced by terrain or enemy presence, deployment zone, etc. You can't keep everything more than 6" apart all the time. The idea that everyone just did so is rather fantastical. This was also helped by the fact that area terrain would simply completely block LoS and you could sneak up quickly without being shot at units would be clumped to take advantage of what firing lanes existed. Some armies were more vulnerable to this than others, you didn't get a super unit consolidating up an entire line every game, but it did happen, there's a reason GW abandoned that mechanic for a loooooong time.

Consolidation was a fine idea. Being able to chain...well, were it to come back maybe you shouldn't be able to do it twice in a row or something.

Need to catch your wind, see.