Let's do something crazy and be pseudo-positive about 8th edition for a change.

What things present in previous editions are you glad are not in 8th?

Personally my favourite change was removing vehicle weapon arcs. Not only did they never bother to define the default arcs, telling you do go by how you physically modelled the model, but since you couldn't split fire it made sponsons a big waste of points. If they were the 90 degree Guard type, you could never fire both against small targets because they were parallel to each other pointing forward, so most likely couldn't draw LOS with both and even if they were the Predator/Land Raider 180 degree type there was still a massive dead-zone in front of you where you couldn't draw line of sight with either gun.

And don't get me started on the number of arguments about whether or not my hull mounted weapon was within 45 degrees or not.

- old AP-System
- vehicle fire arcs
- vehicle armor values as they simply didn't matter since 6th edition when hull points were introduced and every vehicle was more flimsy than a single plague marine
- soulblaze, roll a die to roll a die to then get a S3 hit or something... 7th edition in a nutshell
- look out, Sir! - a lot of unnsecessary roling to wound a character - and you basically could never kill a character from range, as he even dodged sniper rifles. The 8th edition ruling is still not perfect, but at least it's simple and there are ways to hurt characters now.

The old cover system. It usually only helped cheap infantry so it was mostly useless for a lot of units.

I really hated formations in 7th. "Run this very specific list of models to get a powerful and in many instances necessary benefit. What, you don't like tomb blades? feth you, no Decurion for you."

Crazy wound allocation from 5th. 5 nobs take 5 wounds? No one dies because they all have slightly different gear

Gitdakka wrote:
Crazy wound allocation from 5th. 5 nobs take 5 wounds? No one dies because they all have slightly different gear

I remember when Nob Bikers reigned supreme and slaughtered entire enemy armies. Good times!

OH thats easy!

Dying on rolls of 1 moving over terrain
Needing 6's to hit moving vehicles in melee
Instant Death for MW models
No pre-measuring
Scatter dice
Flamers hitting guys inside open top

I really don't miss the old wound table from when I first started playing.

Instant death from double toughness weapons. Its so good for T3 HQ models to not be instajibbed any more. So nice to not have celestine or cannoness die to a stray autocannon shot.

One guy in shiny armour somehow protecting an entire squad from a hail of gunfire. Sadly, that's still a "tactic" in Horus Heresy games. I'm close to breaking and painting my squad sergeants silver. :(

The rather arbitrary distinction between a tank that's simply big and one that's super-heavy.

I played a lot of 2nd, and a decent amount of 3rd and a tiny bit of 4th before leaving the game for a good 10+ years. The game just didn't interest me. I came back with a large 2nd edition army several months before 8th launched. I watched 7th edition games locally for a while, and then partook in several for a couple weeks before ceasing playing again. 7th was some perverse awful version of 3rd, an edition that never appealed to me a ton. It was very much a "Christ this game has gone stupid" moment. I stated in several places, even here on Dakka that unfortunately I thought my 40K time was past and I couldn't fathom a version of 40K from GW that would bring me back.

So...I'm just happy the game is as versatile as it is now. I can say I miss nothing about hte 3rd/4th/7th I played.

EDIT: Sorry for that tangent...but in the few months I witness 7th, I just couldn't fathom

1) Deathstars
2) 2+ re-rollable saves
3) Land Raiders immobilizing on rubble
4) Invisibility spells
5) Free stuff from detachments (in a game 'balanced' by point values)
6) The need to spread out models meticulously to avoid templates...way too much time spent, etc.

Wound allocation
Armour values
Move or fire heavy weapons

That’s pretty much it

4th edition was the best by far, but here's what I don't miss from it:

- lack of official FAQs combined with such poor rules writing clarity that the community-made FAQs were as long as the rulebook
- being absolutely brutal towards transports, even forcing passengers to disembark out of phase on any penetrating hit
- only two codexes a year, each with 2, maaaybe 3 plastic kits
- Orks getting diddly squat in the entire lifespan of the edition

My Orks striking last in combat even though I was charging was not very fun, I like the 8th edition rule way better.
Losing your entire unit for failing a leadership test after combat was not fun as well, although I suppose it did make combat feel deadly.

Having to take a leadership test to shoot at any unit not the closest unit really slowed down the shooting phase, so I'm glad that's gone too!

ITT- Several people disliked some of the more nuanced tactical elements of 40k and were glad they were removed.

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- Several people disliked some of the more nuanced tactical elements of 40k and were glad they were removed.

except a lot of this wasn't nuanced. Let's use vehicle turrets as an example here, this might be "nuanced" if GW had carefully designed and balanced each tank around it's field of fire but well... it seems pretty clear to me they didn't

BrianDavion wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- Several people disliked some of the more nuanced tactical elements of 40k and were glad they were removed.

except a lot of this wasn't nuanced. Let's use vehicle turrets as an example here, this might be "nuanced" if GW had carefully designed and balanced each tank around it's field of fire but well... it seems pretty clear to me they didn't

Nuanced for 40k.

Let me preface this by saying I love 8th, so let's not have any of the knights of a certain hue jump down my throat....


Vehicle firing arcs, target priority, things that were impossible to wound/hit for some things, wound allocation, no premeasuring. And those are just the ones mentioned ITT. All were nice tactical elements to the game that made you think about things like board positioning and LOS denial. Removing them is not a good thing. Just because GW poorly implemented some of them does not make the underlying concept a bad idea.

Wound allocation tactical? Woubd allocation as it was before was a travesty. It was a bug not a feature.

I agree vehicle firing arcs and armor values were tactical, butthey wherent suited for warhammer. Those things work on skirmish games with 1-2 vehicles per side, or games about armored combat.
Also, they are better for historical games, where every vehicle is a box. In warhammer, with eldar, necron and tau vehicles, it didnt worked priperly.

 Grimtuff wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- Several people disliked some of the more nuanced tactical elements of 40k and were glad they were removed.

except a lot of this wasn't nuanced. Let's use vehicle turrets as an example here, this might be "nuanced" if GW had carefully designed and balanced each tank around it's field of fire but well... it seems pretty clear to me they didn't

Nuanced for 40k.

Let me preface this by saying I love 8th, so let's not have any of the knights of a certain hue jump down my throat....


Vehicle firing arcs, target priority, things that were impossible to wound/hit for some things, wound allocation, no premeasuring. And those are just the ones mentioned ITT. All were nice tactical elements to the game that made you think about things like board positioning and LOS denial. Removing them is not a good thing. Just because GW poorly implemented some of them does not make the underlying concept a bad idea.

A lack of premeasuring doesn't add anything meaningful tactically IMO. With premeasuring and how things work in 8th you can check the odds of getting into charge range, whether advancing is worth it, if you can get your aura close enough, etc. Whereas without premeasuring if you're 1/8" out it doesn't matter what your reasoning for doing something was.

CHALLENGES !!

Whoever thought it was a cool idea should rot in Nurgle's garden. I hated everything about them, so much that it heavily contributed to my 3 years break of Warhammer.

If they'd only think of bringing them back, I'd quit again without a second thought.

Personally my favourite change was removing vehicle weapon arcs. Not only did they never bother to define the default arcs, telling you do go by how you physically modelled the model, but since you couldn't split fire it made sponsons a big waste of points. If they were the 90 degree Guard type, you could never fire both against small targets because they were parallel to each other pointing forward, so most likely couldn't draw LOS with both and even if they were the Predator/Land Raider 180 degree type there was still a massive dead-zone in front of you where you couldn't draw line of sight with either gun.

No more maneuvering of the vehicles.
I can see your tank chain from my tank chain and so I can shoot you.
This gives the game more the flavor of a board game.

 wuestenfux wrote:

Personally my favourite change was removing vehicle weapon arcs. Not only did they never bother to define the default arcs, telling you do go by how you physically modelled the model, but since you couldn't split fire it made sponsons a big waste of points. If they were the 90 degree Guard type, you could never fire both against small targets because they were parallel to each other pointing forward, so most likely couldn't draw LOS with both and even if they were the Predator/Land Raider 180 degree type there was still a massive dead-zone in front of you where you couldn't draw line of sight with either gun.

No more maneuvering of the vehicles.
I can see your tank chain from my tank chain and so I can shoot you.
This gives the game more the flavor of a board game.

Including facings and firing arcs when a rhino could be driving up the field spinning like a beyblade without any impact on their movement speed was always silly.

Wound allocation from the direction of the attacking unit. That created so much argument, micromanaging, and headaches, and was one of the major contributors for why assault sucked in 6th/7th. You could even lose out on that unot's assault turn, since you could be knocked out of btb and fail to get back in with your pile in. It was such a bad rule.

Similarly, having to move the shortest distance during the assault move. being able to move your guys how you want adds a very welcome element of involvement into the assault phase and adds some new tactics (and kinda necessary if you need to lock a unit down to keep them from Falling Back)

Also challanges. Just anything about 7th, honestly.

Whilst 8th still has some roll a dice to see if you roll some dice sillyness the removal of random powers, warlord traits and wotnot is good

Removal of templates and scatter, yep the new dice based shots thing isn't perfect its less fractious

Formations, again Stratagems are a shaky replacement but every step away from Skyhammer is a good move

Off the top of my head:
- Flamers hitting units inside open-topped vehicles.
- Having to fire all of a unit's weapons at the same target.
- Formations.
- Invisibility.
- The entire 7th edition psychic phase.
- Instant Death.
- The rules for super heavies and gargantuan monstrous creatures.
- Dark Lances and Blasters being complete garbage against vehicles.
- Only being able to snapshot against fliers.
- Torrent Flamers
- Not a rule as such, but I certainly don't miss how so many weapons in the game were all but useless towards the end of 7th. There were so many undercosted super heavies, gargantuans and vehicles rolling around that basic infantry weapons were almost entirely worthless. Even the stuff they could theoretically hurt tended to be so durable that they simply couldn't inflict any meaningful damage.

Gitdakka wrote:
Crazy wound allocation from 5th. 5 nobs take 5 wounds? No one dies because they all have slightly different gear

See, for all the complaints, I actually didn't mind 5th's wound allocation system all that much. In the example you mentioned, is it really so unreasonably that 5 different Nobs were wounded, rather than just two taking all the fire and being killed outright?

What's more, there were only a few units in the entire game that could abuse the rule in any meaningful way (Nobz being one of them).

Compare that to 6th and 7th - where you can have an HQ stand at the front of a unit using a 2+ save to absorb small-arms fire, whilst casually designating other members of the unit to be hit by more powerful weapons. It was much more abusable and could be done by far more units.

Oh god, I'd already managed to completely forget about Look Out Sir. What a load of nonsense that was. Don't miss it in the slightest.

- Vehicle damage chart
- Vehicle firing arcs
- Drawing LOS from weapon mounts
- Emergency disembarking
- Tank shock
- Limit on how many weapons a vehicle could shoot
- No split fire
- Scoring wave serpents (would be equivalent to wave serpents with objective secured today)
- Psychic phase
- Rolling for psychic powers
- Psychic disciplines
- Rolling for warlord traits
- Falling back
- Scattering
- Removing casualties from the front
- Challenges
- Independent Characters conferring rules
- USR list in the BRB
- Unit types that changed how units moved: Beasts, cavalry, bikes, jet bikes, skimmers, fast skimmers, flyers, jump infantry, flying monstrous creatures, jumping monstrous creatures...
- Monstrous creatures acting like planes
- T4(5) for bikers
- Instant death
- Old toughness chart
- Comparing weapon skill
- Initiative
- Sweeping advances (aka auto-lose any ork unit if you roll below average)
- 7th edition ork codex
- 7th edition ork supplement
- 7th edition "improved" version of ork supplement


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

Gitdakka wrote:
Crazy wound allocation from 5th. 5 nobs take 5 wounds? No one dies because they all have slightly different gear

I remember when Nob Bikers reigned supreme and slaughtered entire enemy armies. Good times!

Somehow everyone remembers nob bikers but not TWC, who did the very same thing, except they had storm shields, and the all around better stat-line of space marines.

Also GK Paladins.

I definatly think instant death was a problem. How many otherwise pretty good to great characters where effectively dismissed with "lacks eternal warrior, will die to a single power first strike, avoid"?

The awfully written 5th ed Tyranid codex springs straight to mind.....

example. Mawlocs eat people by swallowing them from underneath, fine in theory buuuttt.....

1. Deepstrike rules prevented you from placing the template actually on an enemy unit...

2 If you did get lucky and scatter on to some foes, you then mishapped and died or went back underground.

(yes i know it was eventually faqed, but still...no one noticed this????)

Wound allocation was always a pain.

Formations. Nice idea in theory, horribly Implemented (if only they had charged a pts value for actually using them on top of paying for the units...)

princeyg wrote:


Formations. Nice idea in theory, horribly Implemented (if only they had charged a pts value for actually using them on top of paying for the units...)

I liked the idea of rewarding players for taking a fluffy force, the idea of a wayto enchourage taking tac marines backed up with assault and devestator marines (instead of "scouts backed up by whatever FOTM elite choice you have") but yeah in practice it was bad, as some formations where crap, others where too good. and then some basicly had rules attached to it that where pretty much the only way you could get the army to work.

It must be my age, but a fair amount of the things listed are things I miss. They made the game more tactical I feel, players had to think during a game and not just rely on special rules, strategems, and re-rolls, which tends to be how 8th is going.

The things I don't miss are:

Templates.
Scatter dice.
Random warlord trait and psychic powers.
6th and 7th edition psychic phase.
Formations.
Look out sir.
5th editions wound allocation to multi wound models.
Re-rollable 2++ saves.
Deathstars.
Challenges.

Agree with most of whats been said in here, I'll add the old Weapon Skill chart though. It doesn't matter if your the single best close combat fighter in the entire galaxy, you're still only hitting your opponent on 3's and they'll be hitting you back on 4's.

35 pages of Vehicle rules, all of which combined to make said vehicles utter trash unless they were a Fast Skimmer. Heck, the majority of unit type rules were terrible all told anyway.

Charging and being forced to fight last because the model is equipped with an axe.

 IronBrand wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

Personally my favourite change was removing vehicle weapon arcs. Not only did they never bother to define the default arcs, telling you do go by how you physically modelled the model, but since you couldn't split fire it made sponsons a big waste of points. If they were the 90 degree Guard type, you could never fire both against small targets because they were parallel to each other pointing forward, so most likely couldn't draw LOS with both and even if they were the Predator/Land Raider 180 degree type there was still a massive dead-zone in front of you where you couldn't draw line of sight with either gun.

No more maneuvering of the vehicles.
I can see your tank chain from my tank chain and so I can shoot you.
This gives the game more the flavor of a board game.

Including facings and firing arcs when a rhino could be driving up the field spinning like a beyblade without any impact on their movement speed was always silly.

I dont think about a Rhino here, more on a bunch of LRBTs parking within range. Games of this kind are a bit silly.

2nd edition where you could load up a character with a metric ton of gear that gave them multiple saves, and they were allowed to use every save every time. So if your character had two forcefields and a special set of armor, he had three saving throws available at all times, and could take all of them every time he was attacked. Occasionally, it made for some very cinematic moments. Most of the time, it simply became the reason my group didn't outlaw vortex grenades.

I also don't miss:

re-rollable 2++
7th ed psychic phase
using % of total points to determine how your army was made up (instead of a force-org chart)
excessive modifiers - "My gun has an ap mod of -2, but I'm at medium range so -1, but you have hard cover so +2, but I moved so ..."
While I still think "Foot of Mork" should be in the game as the old green foot-shaped template, I don't miss the other templates
Stun locked vehicles

The old Tyranid "make what you want" section of the codex. One edition (I forget which, but the one that came with the launch of Old One Eye and Red Terror) allowed you to either use the standard codex rules or go to the back and totally customise the tyranids.

You could change stats, change weapon limits etc... If you wanted you could make an entire group of Venom Cannon holding warriors.

It was not only totally open to being broken, but I felt it added a layer of complexity way beyond what is healthy for a miniatures wargame of GW's general scale. If it were for 5 aside games fine, but for larger armies it was just way too much random stat changing and I'm glad it never became a standard thing within Tyranids nor within the game itself.



Otherwise a good few of the rules people dislike appear to not be " bad ideas" but bad rulings on good ideas. Having fire arcs on tanks isn't a bad idea, its a very neat idea; but it did need far better balancing so that tanks were viable and sensible.

I don't miss the single Force Organisation Chart we were stuck with in 4th and 5th editions. What do you mean, you're fielding a Tyranid swarm (or Ork horde, Eldar Warhost, Imperial Guard company, etc)? Your army must conform to the strictures of a Codex Astartes Space Marine Battle Company. The nadir of that was the contortions required to field an Imperial Guard Infantry company - how many different units did they crowbar into a single Troops choice?

Free psychic powers....oh wait...

More seriously, I feel like there are a number of changes I like to the edition but a couple stand out:

+Vehicles aren't more fragile than monstrous creatures anymore. The way vehicles worked often made them almost pointless when compared to MCs and the Rhino had to be cranked down to 35 points (including it's base storm bolter) just to be worth using. While some feel it's too expensive now, it's still got a much better profile than it used to.
+Formations are gone (I loved the concept of formations being a way to encourage people to build thematically, but the buffs were either useless resulting in them not being worth building or so over the top everyone HAD to build it to stay in the game). Strategems seem to be the much more toned down version of this by encouraging the use of certain units, or having a certain number of models in a list.

Most of 6E/7E's "innovations" (Formations, Hull Points, Jink, Challenges, Look Out Sir, etc, so many awful mechanics that were just fundamentally really bad game mechanisms, I'd add Allies but we still have that)

4E Transport rules.

3E/4E vehicle damage table & Skimmer rules.

Vehicle arcs & facings (made sense for a skirmish game, not so much for the scale 40k came to play at, and definitely made no sense when it did not apply to MC's as well)

Blast Templates & Scatter dice

5E-7E Wound Allocation, all 3 did it terribly and the people involved in writing those rules should feel bad.

Having an entire edition go by with only half the armies getting an updated codex.

Invisibility.

Complete lack of a Damage stat.

No pre-measuring.

Reserves that can possibly not enter the game and then count as destroyed if they don't. (if you just kept rolling a "1" for reserve rolls in 3E or 4E).

Missions that forced certain unit types to start in reserve.

3rd edition's Deep Strike rules where everyone needed to fit under a large blast marker and if anyone stuck out past the edge of the marker they died.

God that rule was dumb. Thematic considering how bad teleporation tech is supposed to be in the setting, but dumb.

Consolidate into combat (though with the fall back rule it might not be so bad now) from 4th ed.

Phase Out (necron 3rd ed)

6th-7th ed style Formations (pay to win. Prior to 6th formations you paid for the formation rules in points. In 6th and 7th you got the rules for free, you just needed the models. Which of course required really specific combinations that you may already have. Also free transports)

5th: Wound allocation shenanigans, 0 communication from GW about anything. Typos in FAQ never being fixed. FW being super powered.

6th: Fliers everywhere, invisibility. Allies table. Death stars.

7th: formations all day every day

All of the above: firing arcs, vehicle AV angles, vaguely worded rules that were impossible to decipher.

- Ogryn stupidity
- Wraithguard “stupidity”
- Tyranid instinctive behaviors
- Rolling for psychic powers
- Rolling for warlord traits
- The vehicle damage table in 6th & 7th
- Vehicle hit location template from 2E

Rolling for psychic powers and warlord traits, I always found that bizarre.

2+ rerollable saves. Those were stupid.

Granted, now we have 2+ rerollable to hit auras, which gets a little silly at times, but it's still WORLDS more fair than 2+ rerollable saves.

Otherwise a good few of the rules people dislike appear to not be " bad ideas" but bad rulings on good ideas. Having fire arcs on tanks isn't a bad idea, its a very neat idea; but it did need far better balancing so that tanks were viable and sensible.

I would rephrase this as "Good idea, bad execution". Which, imo, is a hallmark of GW rules writing. Lots of really really good ideas, that end up very poorly executed.


Something else that I really liked at the time, but, in retrospect am glad it's gone, is the Tyranid pre-game table from the 2nd ed book. The table where you would roll on a chart for multiple units on your opponent's side and those units could suffer problems/disadvantages right out of the gate with no way to mitigate them. I get he fluff behind it, but it's a sloppy game mechanic that can become un-fun very quickly.

There are 2 things that I am SO GLAD are gone.

1 - Invisible Rerolling 2+ save Deathstars
2 - Formations giving Arbitrary buffs just for takings specific units.

Formations.

All shots in a unit having to be directed at the same target.

Removing casualties from the closest model first.

Attaching 3 dozen characters to small units to confer special rules.

Hull points.

The 7e Psychic Power system

Custom Rules.

Seriously - ever since 4th/5th every tournament had this 20 page packet of custom rules that had started as an attempt to 'fix' the game but inevitably became slanted to favor the existing meta versus newcomers about halfway through the packet.

I remeber one tournament not only had a 'permitted models' list that pretty much banned anything produced after 2010, but included a mini-codex so the squats player could keep playing. I gave up.

I just want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that ITC now consists of 3-4 rules, a couple notes on optional rules in the book being enforced (datasheets, beta rules), and everything after that is missions. That's a half-page worth of notes that can be memorized easily. Even ETC can be summarized in a page. It's not a perfect edition, but damn if it isn't the best one so far.

Weird on firing arcs, for the first time we have a "data card" for each unit where a little diagram could easily show weapon arcs and variations in toughness/saves and they have dropped it.

personally not missing "RANDOM!!!!" everything and templates

leopard wrote:
Weird on firing arcs, for the first time we have a "data card" for each unit where a little diagram could easily show weapon arcs and variations in toughness/saves and they have dropped it.

personally not missing "RANDOM!!!!" everything and templates

They brought it back in Titcanicus though.

Honestly firing arcs really feel like an "all or nothing" sort of thing. Like it should matter where models are facing when they shoot on all levels of the game or it shouldn't because it creates a disparity in the rules against one type of unit over another.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

leopard wrote:
Weird on firing arcs, for the first time we have a "data card" for each unit where a little diagram could easily show weapon arcs and variations in toughness/saves and they have dropped it.

personally not missing "RANDOM!!!!" everything and templates

They brought it back in Titcanicus though.

Honestly firing arcs really feel like an "all or nothing" sort of thing. Like it should matter where models are facing when they shoot on all levels of the game or it shouldn't because it creates a disparity in the rules against one type of unit over another.

We now have an edition where it would be painfully simple to do it on a case by case basis, e.g. perhaps T-1 on the rear 90 degrees on some vehicles, or a modified save in the fron 180 or whatever, but its on the card so nice and clear

leopard wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

leopard wrote:
Weird on firing arcs, for the first time we have a "data card" for each unit where a little diagram could easily show weapon arcs and variations in toughness/saves and they have dropped it.

personally not missing "RANDOM!!!!" everything and templates

They brought it back in Titcanicus though.

Honestly firing arcs really feel like an "all or nothing" sort of thing. Like it should matter where models are facing when they shoot on all levels of the game or it shouldn't because it creates a disparity in the rules against one type of unit over another.

We now have an edition where it would be painfully simple to do it on a case by case basis, e.g. perhaps T-1 on the rear 90 degrees on some vehicles, or a modified save in the fron 180 or whatever, but its on the card so nice and clear

Same arguement could me for base sizes, but GW never seems to put their foot down on that either.

I'm not saying it can't be done (and I'd be all for it if everything followed the same rule of having a front and rear arc at least) but chances are it was dropped because the way vehicles work changed so drastically it didn't make sense to keep that one rule distinct from all others.

 Nym wrote:
CHALLENGES !!

Whoever thought it was a cool idea should rot in Nurgle's garden. I hated everything about them, so much that it heavily contributed to my 3 years break of Warhammer.

If they'd only think of bringing them back, I'd quit again without a second thought.

God this, X1000. My favorite memory of how much I hate challenges is when a Chaos marine character challenged my IG sergeant, obviously won, and then turned into a Daemon prince for the grand victory of pummeling a lowly human into the ground.

40k is in an odd place. It's tried to shed some of the skirmish game mechanics, but can't quite take the last couple of steps. They drop fire arcs and facings as unnecessary, but cling onto other features that belong in a smaller game (per-model LOS, for example).

Just treat the unit as the thing, rather than worrying about each individual model and the fact that the guy with the flamer is over there and not here.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

leopard wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

leopard wrote:
Weird on firing arcs, for the first time we have a "data card" for each unit where a little diagram could easily show weapon arcs and variations in toughness/saves and they have dropped it.

personally not missing "RANDOM!!!!" everything and templates

They brought it back in Titcanicus though.

Honestly firing arcs really feel like an "all or nothing" sort of thing. Like it should matter where models are facing when they shoot on all levels of the game or it shouldn't because it creates a disparity in the rules against one type of unit over another.

We now have an edition where it would be painfully simple to do it on a case by case basis, e.g. perhaps T-1 on the rear 90 degrees on some vehicles, or a modified save in the fron 180 or whatever, but its on the card so nice and clear

Same arguement could me for base sizes, but GW never seems to put their foot down on that either.

I'm not saying it can't be done (and I'd be all for it if everything followed the same rule of having a front and rear arc at least) but chances are it was dropped because the way vehicles work changed so drastically it didn't make sense to keep that one rule distinct from all others.

very true on base sizes...

 vonjankmon wrote:

 Nym wrote:
CHALLENGES !!

Whoever thought it was a cool idea should rot in Nurgle's garden. I hated everything about them, so much that it heavily contributed to my 3 years break of Warhammer.

If they'd only think of bringing them back, I'd quit again without a second thought.

God this, X1000. My favorite memory of how much I hate challenges is when a Chaos marine character challenged my IG sergeant, obviously won, and then turned into a Daemon prince for the grand victory of pummeling a lowly human into the ground.

Maybe it was his 888th challenge and Khorne was pleased with his offering of skulls and promoted him on the spot for that reason?

I mean, it doesn't make much sense in a single game, but in a larger narrative in the greater setting it could work. Especially since characters were always having this cinematic punch ups in the novels but you couldn't do that on the table in the same way.

That said, it wasn't done on the table because it doesn't work properly on the table and it's good that it's gone.

From 7th edition?

Pretty much everything at this point.

Man, I forgot that before, Warlord Traits and Psychic powers where random...

What a travesty that was.

I would say invisibility but it's still alive and well.

Formations.

Psykic phase.

playing against Eldar players who brag about how good they are as tacticians and generals and then place 30 Scatter bikes, Spiders, Wave Serpeants or wraithknights on the table.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ohh, or the same thing with Tau players when they brought 3+ riptides to a friendly game or hell a tournament and talk about how great they are at the game and everyone else needs to L2P

4 different crewmen on a tank that all must shoot at the exact same target.

Things I Don't Miss, By Edition:

3rd Edition:
- Rapid Fire Weapons only firing 1 shot at close range if you move, and no shots at long range.

4th Edition:
- Complete loss of "Sweep and Advance". Not to be seen again until 8th edition with Pile-In moves bringing you potentially into new combats.
- Wound allocation for multi-wound units.
- Trying to make Leadership matter by having to make a test to shoot at things further away than the closest target.

5th Edition:
- Wound allocation, again, even though they tried to fix it.
- Getting better shots with blast weapons by having the tiny hole in the middle land on target, and half-strength to the blast everywhere else around it, felt grossly dumb.

6th Edition:
- Strength D weapons. (You hit with a Strength D weapon? Just remove the model unless they roll a 1.)
- The New Psychic Phase. Convoluted mess that it was.

7th Edition: (buckle up, since this was the last we saw of a bunch of maligned mechanics)
- Toe-in-Cover for gargantuan models.
- Broken Formations and Even More Broken Decurions so you could stack multiple free bonuses.
- Invisibility.
- Close-to-closest casualty removal.
- Blast and flamer templates. (I disliked the actual templates, even though I liked the random nature of them, they were just too swingy in that they forced players to always have to be mindful of exactly how spread out their models were, which then made blasts almost impossible to use with any value)
- Difficult terrain slowing everything down.
- Infantry being the worst unit type by a HUGE margin. I think the game is best when played with Infantry. The recent pushing of the power of Super Heavies in the game actually has me upset, because it's making the Infantry not matter much again.
- Battle Brothers and the ally-chart.
- Stomps. Hated stomps.
- Access points, and how people would get mad when my open-topped transports ignored them.
- Fear mechanic. It was pointless in 95% of your games.
- Soul Fire mechanic. It was pointless in 95% of your games.
- Having to find your rules for one unit across 4 books. I get people are getting upset that they have to carry around so much stuff again, but at least that's by your own choice for how you're building your army, and it's always "one unit, one source for rules"+rulebook+faq's. Okay, this is still an issue with there being answers for answers to some generic questions being found in specific FAQ's that aren't your own faction, but hey, it's still better than it was.
- Total loss of GW communication. I'm so glad that's over!
- Skimmers and Bike being the most sought after unit types, due to having access to Jink.
- Hammer of Wrath rules. They were helpful, but the reasoning for timings and how they hit was just... ugh.
- Challenges. They never felt natural. They always felt like you were abusing something, and whomever had the worse character felt like they were in a feel-bad situation where they either lose their character, or the character doesn't even get to fight.
- Vehicle Damage Table. Ever since 3rd this thing was annoying. Which chart? how much to add?
- Superheavies Ignoring the Vehicle Damage Table. So, you finally have something with enough hull points and weapons and whatnot that it's actually going to be interesting if you damage portions of it as it goes down? Great! Now let's make them ignore that.
- Armies just ignoring all the rules of the game. There was way too much of this, where some armies just played a different game than you.
- Scatbikes with Jump-shoot-jump, Obsec, and a movement distance that effectively made them teleport.
- Drop Pods getting more accurate the more stuff there was in the way to mess up a teleport.


Phew... 7th was bad...

7th edition.
See yarium post for many many good reasons that 8th is better

I don't miss blast templates and scatter dice.

- The fact that vehicles could be one-shotted or utterly crippled with a single hit while monstrous creatures only ever lost a single wound and never degraded, because somehow a giant bug getting headshotted with a lascannon seemingly wasn't possible or something. Even GW realized how much better this made MCs and suddenly every new big walker like Dreadknights or fricking Stormsurges weren't vehicles but monsters. It also lead to the god-awful band-aid that was D-weapons
- Dreadnoughts or any close combat vehicle being absolute crap against any sort of monster in close combat, or against most things in general that weren't bog standard infantry that didn't have a hidden fist/claw (which weren't many). Bjorn the Fell-Handed, the most legendary Dreadnought ever that costed close to 300 points and was eating monsters for breakfast in the lore had almost 0 chances against a basic Carnifex, let alone any better MC. Now finally those Dreads can and will trade equal or smash those bugs.
-That vehicles (even walkers on bases) had strict firing arcs to adhere to but even giant monsters that are so massive they would take half an hour to turn around could fire in any direction.
- The old cover system. 4++ saves for Grots and conscripts while Marines got absolutely nothing against anything that wasn't ignoring their entire save. Doesn't make sense and was too all or nothing. What is needed though is more detailed and easily accessible terrain rules (e.g rules for basic archetypes such as forests/ruins/streets/buildings/rivers) and the return of terrain based unit abilities such as the Chimera's status as amphibean vehicle or the Skitarii rangers ignoring negative terrain rules or such.
- The old AP system for the same reason. The granular WHFB system was always much better and I'm so glad we finally got it too.
-Sniper rifles being unable to actually snipe people. Instead they were there to pin things (as if that ever happened) and blink wounds off monstrous creatures (Wut?).
- Morale was utterly pointless and completely ignored by 90% of factions. Now you actually have morale losses in pretty much every game and it's a thing that needs to be kept in mind for almost any army.
- Mechanicus/Skitarii and Guard/Scions having their own codices rather than being combined like they are now. Just why? Especially Scions which had like 4 units + unecessary Commissars.
- Blast templates. A hassle, too random, lots of arguments and slowed the game down massively because everyone was spreading EVERY model out by 2" at all times. Bring back flamer templates though, they never were an issue IMO and are much better than D6 random hits that don't ignore cover (Wut?).
-6th edition fliers. Absolute balance breakers against any army that couldn't bring good AA... which was most of them. -1 to hit is a gazillion times better than only hitting on 6, except for Orks of course (which need a fix for neg. to shooting hit rolls).
- While things aren't even close to perfect now, compared to 8th ed 6th and 7th balance was absolute dog-feth, with many factions having codices from two editions ago and in particular in 7th edition at least half the armies had close to 0 chance against the top armies.

Why are we doing happy clap songs about what we dont miss when this edition is a steaming pile of Tau?

i do not miss going against free models.

gladius detachment bringing an extra few hundred points to a game, tyranids throwing out unending gaunts, and chaos spawning in tons of demons for free from sorcerors.

do not miss str D weapons

do not miss vehicle damage table. in 5th the glancing a land raider forever and never able to destroy them.

 Brutallica wrote:
Why are we doing happy clap songs about what we dont miss when this edition is a steaming pile of Tau?

Oh my, what a well argued post. If you want another "waaah, 8th edition is gak!" circle jerk thread then you are welcome to create one instead of doing off-topic drive by's here ¯\_(ツ)_/ ¯.

 Brutallica wrote:
Why are we doing happy clap songs about what we dont miss when this edition is a steaming pile of Tau?

Maybe because it's not as bad as all the Chicken Littles would have us believe? Maybe because, while falwed for sure, it is one of the better editions of the game in its history.

i miss some univeral special rules, and blasts, i really miss blasts, especially the flamer template.
Other than that thank god formations died. Don't get me wrong handled propperly they could've been fairly good. Sadly we got formations which just gave you free points or effects that were broken, turning the 7th edition into a dick measuring contest of who had the better formations.
(bonus points for terrible written formations like the one for helldrakes that did not work propperly)

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:

- Blast templates. A hassle, too random, lots of arguments and slowed the game down massively because everyone was spreading EVERY model out by 2" at all times.

I'm somewhat torn. On the one hand, I do quite like having a physical template, which can potentially scatter onto other units if it misses. On the other hand, by the end of 7th, the number of Large Blast Templates being casually thrown around made infantry guard unplayable.

Agreed about the arguments, though I wonder if that could have been solved with a better scatter mechanic.

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:
Bring back flamer templates though, they never were an issue IMO and are much better than D6 random hits that don't ignore cover (Wut?).

Eh? I think it would be a bit weird to scrap blasts but keep flamer templates. Seems like it would be better to buff flamers (e.g. 2d6 but hits can't exceed number of models in the unit, and enemy units can never benefit from Cover against them).

I am in the do not miss flamer templates catigory. oh look your 100 points in flamers is going to absolutely destroy my 1850 in ork boys horde list. and somehow players always had flamers as their special weapons vs my horde orks but melta against nob bikers. (in pickup games not tournaments, with take all comers lists the flamers were less common)

also agree in 8th large blasts everywhere pretty much made infantry useless.

also do not miss the 2x str auto killing multiwound models.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I would say invisibility but it's still alive and well.

Thanks to Alaitoc Hemlocks yeah

templates..... No more drifting templates or arguments if a toe is covered or not.

Do not miss challenges. It was pointless and the stronger your character was the less interesting it was. Hey let my inittiative 10 challenge your nob with PK. I refuse as he is just going to die. Okay he can't make attacks now. It was the most garbage fluufy attempt at a rule that GW had written. So every game I had to choose for my nobs to die or never make attacks. I started downgrading to Big Choppas and then move to no wargear just so that I wasn't wasting points by refusing.

My Powerfist Sarge can't be challenged out!

Granted, he's also hitting with a fraction of the killing power he had in 7th, but still - his squad thinking him a coward if he doesn't go 1-on-1 with a Great Unclean One always struck me as strange.

 G00fySmiley wrote:
I am in the do not miss flamer templates catigory. oh look your 100 points in flamers is going to absolutely destroy my 1850 in ork boys horde list. and somehow players always had flamers as their special weapons vs my horde orks but melta against nob bikers. (in pickup games not tournaments, with take all comers lists the flamers were less common)

Sounds to me like you never slapped 15 Burnas in a Battlewagon and gave them a taste of their own medicine. Roll up next to a unit and fire the Brunas from inside the Wagon, place template, realize that mathematically every template has to be in the same place as you have to cover the max amount of models, multiply the amount of hits by 15 and proceed to delete a unit through sheer volume of saves.

Orks could do template shenanigans better than a lot of things.

 iGuy91 wrote:
There are 2 things that I am SO GLAD are gone.

1 - Invisible Rerolling 2+ save Deathstars
2 - Formations giving Arbitrary buffs just for takings specific units.

Oh, right. Invisibility. That was awful.

Though.......overlapping - to hit auras now create situations where orks can simply not hit targets. That needs to be fixed, I think a game-wide rule that natural 6s always hit should be instituted.

5th edition wound allocation was indeed pretty bad.
Many a time I had a unit of genestealers assault something like a tactical squad, and roll a bunch of rends. But too bad they meant almost nothing, as all the rends got stacked on the sergeant or heavy weapons guy, leaving the rest of the squad to just take a bunch of regular armour saves.

It's also one of the many reasons why 5th edition tyranids were bad. They were one of the few armies that had pretty much no way of using the wound allocation mechanics to their own advantage, as every member of their squads had to be equipped identically.



The No Retreat mechanic for fearless units was also fairly awful. It heavily favoured fearless MEQ units over light infantry.
Fearless MEQs might just shrug off a couple of extra armour saves at the end of combat, in the odd occasion where they actually lost. Whereas gaunts tended to always 'lose' combat, even if they dragged down some models vastly more valuable than their own losses. So for them the rule basically meant 'always take double your casualties in close combat'.

Sure it was 'better' than being outright swept and losing the whole unit, but it was still depressing and a miserable mechanic. Particularly when being fearless across the board was supposed to be your armies big bonus to offset their nasty penalties, yet it ended up being worse than ATSKNF, which had the same upside of ignoring being swept, but also allowed marines to happily walk out of a losing combat and automatically act normally the next turn (with a free 3" movement bonus too!).



The old initiative system sucked due to the charging through cover = I1 thing. It was particularly disheartening due to playing an army with generally pretty high initiative across the board, except that they lacked the great and holy frag grenade, meaning that the stat became completely meaningless. No-one was ever stepping out of cover when up against tyranid infantry. So we just had to deal with always punching last.


The old thing where you could only hit a vehicle in close combat on a 6, if it moved more than (I think) 6", was pretty bad too. My army dealt with vehicles by sending giant can openers on legs over to crack them open. First I have to get all the way across the table, and then I can't even hit them, because the clowns are doing donuts in their parking lot. Wouldn't have been so bad if shooting was similarly affected, but nope, only close combat.



I'm pretty happy with 8th. It's the first time since 4th where my army has actually been any good.

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:

 Brutallica wrote:
Why are we doing happy clap songs about what we dont miss when this edition is a steaming pile of Tau?

Oh my, what a well argued post. If you want another "waaah, 8th edition is gak!" circle jerk thread then you are welcome to create one instead of doing off-topic drive by's here ¯\_(ツ)_/ ¯.

Sorry my bad, keep on clapping.

Flyers only getting hit by range fire on a natural 6, UNLESS you bought a flipping terrain piece to park your dudes in.

6th edition caused my already wavering interest in the game with my CSM to completely cease. Sold my army off and everything.

8th edition is a hell of a lot better, Vehicles are tougher (as they should be), Flyers are mostly balanced (-1 to hit on them isn't NEARLY as bad), and cover saves aren't stupid anymore.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
I am in the do not miss flamer templates catigory. oh look your 100 points in flamers is going to absolutely destroy my 1850 in ork boys horde list. and somehow players always had flamers as their special weapons vs my horde orks but melta against nob bikers. (in pickup games not tournaments, with take all comers lists the flamers were less common)

Sounds to me like you never slapped 15 Burnas in a Battlewagon and gave them a taste of their own medicine. Roll up next to a unit and fire the Brunas from inside the Wagon, place template, realize that mathematically every template has to be in the same place as you have to cover the max amount of models, multiply the amount of hits by 15 and proceed to delete a unit through sheer volume of saves.

Orks could do template shenanigans better than a lot of things.

Then realize that you are playing 7th edition and your battlewagon was not allowed to go faster than 6" if you wanted to flame anything. Unless your opponent was an idiot, you would never get any models under the template.

Burna wagon died with the last codex. Just like everything else that has half-decent in 4th, 5th or 6th. GW made sure you would not be competitive with your pre-codex army.

Flamer template means spacing between models matters, and spacing out infantry at 2" was the least fun part of every edition prior to 8th. The flamer template needs to stay dead just for that reason.

The classic force org chart was pretty restrictive if you wanted to build a themed list. I really like where we are now with rewards for fielding lots of troops, but the option to create a very specialised list if you want

Requiring the opponent's permission to field special characters lol

Constant chart checking!

That being said I really miss the unit stat and weapon summary pages at the backs of books...

“Remove these models from the table, they are counted as casualties” - Jaws of the world wolf, 6th Ed D-weapons, vortex of doom, etc

 Brutallica wrote:
Why are we doing happy clap songs about what we dont miss when this edition is a steaming pile of Tau?

Because it helps to remind people that all the editions before 8th had their own share of problems, and many of the problems people gripe about with 7th also existed in some form in the editions prior to 7th (it's just that formations and Invisibility tend to make people forget everything else). The game has really only had 4 "proper" editions. What we commonly call 4th-7th really really just revisions of 3rd.

 Brutallica wrote:
Why are we doing happy clap songs about what we dont miss when this edition is a steaming pile of Tau?

Well that took longer than normal.

 Brutallica wrote:

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:

 Brutallica wrote:
Why are we doing happy clap songs about what we dont miss when this edition is a steaming pile of Tau?

Oh my, what a well argued post. If you want another "waaah, 8th edition is gak!" circle jerk thread then you are welcome to create one instead of doing off-topic drive by's here ¯\_(ツ)_/ ¯.

Sorry my bad, keep on clapping.

So you make a condescending statement with nothing to back it up, and then when challenged attempt to somehow take the high ground? Fantastic.

Forced Challenges were pretty stupid.

Hull points. They weren't entirely a bad idea but when even a land raider only had 4 and you could get one with a glancing shot it made tanks laughably weak.

Special rules referring to universal special rules that just referred to other universal special rules.

Infantry, cavalry, beasts, jump infantry, jet pack infantry, bikes jetbikes, Eldar jetbikes, monstrous creatures, chariots, vehicles, flyers, flying monstrous creatures, super heavy vehicles, gargantuan creatures...

'Guess"-range weapons.

Stux wrote:
So you make a condescending statement with nothing to back it up, and then when challenged attempt to somehow take the high ground? Fantastic.

Don't feed the troll. Report, ignore, move on.

A lot of stuff!

- blasts
- scatter die
- challenges
- deathstars
- invisibility and that terrain-moving psy-power
- grav-guns
- re-rollable 2++
- free formations
- frag cannons
- serpent shield
- AV
- AP system
- jink after moving only 1"

Damn, I'm glad there is an 8th ed

 Grimtuff wrote:
ITT- Several people disliked some of the more nuanced tactical elements of 40k and were glad they were removed.

I agree.



When one facepalm is not sufficient...

Love how the GW kool aid has truly been drank with blasts. No, templates were good. The bass ackwards system we have right now is daft.

3 years ago it was points in AoS, now it's blasts. What is the next common gaming concept to become the equivelant of the devil?

 Imateria wrote:
Agree with most of whats been said in here, I'll add the old Weapon Skill chart though. It doesn't matter if your the single best close combat fighter in the entire galaxy, you're still only hitting your opponent on 3's and they'll be hitting you back on 4's.

35 pages of Vehicle rules, all of which combined to make said vehicles utter trash unless they were a Fast Skimmer. Heck, the majority of unit type rules were terrible all told anyway.

WS:
To which edition of the rules does this apply? Models with poor WS (less than half of opponent) would hit the enemy only on 5+ (3rd to 5th).


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 Orblivion wrote:
Charging and being forced to fight last because the model is equipped with an axe.

This also applied to power fists and thunder hammers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tycho wrote:
2nd edition where you could load up a character with a metric ton of gear that gave them multiple saves, and they were allowed to use every save every time. So if your character had two forcefields and a special set of armor, he had three saving throws available at all times, and could take all of them every time he was attacked. Occasionally, it made for some very cinematic moments. Most of the time, it simply became the reason my group didn't outlaw vortex grenades.

I also don't miss:

re-rollable 2++
7th ed psychic phase
using % of total points to determine how your army was made up (instead of a force-org chart)
excessive modifiers - "My gun has an ap mod of -2, but I'm at medium range so -1, but you have hard cover so +2, but I moved so ..."
While I still think "Foot of Mork" should be in the game as the old green foot-shaped template, I don't miss the other templates
Stun locked vehicles

2nd:
SM could take three wargear cards. That´s a metric ton of wargear for you? Models could also only have one source of an invulnerable save. So you could not equip a character with a refraction, conversion and displacer field all at once.
Vortex grenades were just fine to remove high value targets that couldn´t be touched by small arms fire. The model throwing the grenade though would instantly die next turn due to return fire because it left himself pretty exposed. Also bear in mind that you had to throw the grenade and were not able to fire it via a grenade launcher. This meant to get the guy in position was not very easy due to the Overwatch mechanic.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Love how the GW kool aid has truly been drank with blasts. No, templates were good. The bass ackwards system we have right now is daft.

3 years ago it was points in AoS, now it's blasts. What is the next common gaming concept to become the equivelant of the devil?

Do you honestly miss measuring it out to ensure that every model is exactly 2" away from each other?

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Love how the GW kool aid has truly been drank with blasts. No, templates were good. The bass ackwards system we have right now is daft.

3 years ago it was points in AoS, now it's blasts. What is the next common gaming concept to become the equivelant of the devil?

Do you honestly miss measuring it out to ensure that every model is exactly 2" away from each other?

Let's be honest, how often in practice did that happen? Most people didn't give a gak.

Let me ask you a counter question- are you tired of seeing post after post saying Leman Russes, Vindicators etc are gak and the dafty "solutions" people come up with to fix them within the boundaries of 8th? Because I am. There's a simple fix to bring them back to how they were previously, a 5" circle of perspex.

Instant death
no ability to charge after arriving from reserves
grav guns
jink saves, especially rerollable ones.
invisibility
newer walkers being better MCs than the real MCs.
flamers, especially on teleporting/flying units.
that stupid SW spell removing Nid monsters in line with a single initiative check.

IME it happened quite often. People who were playing to win, whether in a casual or competitive environment, were spreading their models out to ensure minimum damage from blasts. I didn't like doing it but eventually had to start when I realized that a lot more of my models were dying to blasts than theirs.

As for your question, blasts vs. no blasts is pretty irrelevant in terms of certain units being good or bad. The Doomsday Ark was crap in 7th and is great now, the Plagueburst Crawler is another excellent tank in 8th.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Love how the GW kool aid has truly been drank with blasts. No, templates were good. The bass ackwards system we have right now is daft.

3 years ago it was points in AoS, now it's blasts. What is the next common gaming concept to become the equivelant of the devil?

Do you honestly miss measuring it out to ensure that every model is exactly 2" away from each other?

Let's be honest, how often in practice did that happen? Most people didn't give a gak.

How often? Every single game when you moved, ran or consolidated with an ork infantry model, for four editions. So ten thousands of times per ork player.

You basically auto-lost with orks if you didn't do it.


You cannot hand-wave this massive disadvantage of blast and flamer templates, no matter how bad their current implementation is.

Blasts were annoying due to the gamey counter to them, which slowed the game down.

Plus the endless arguements created by the scattering.

Just bad all round.

The new mechanic isn't perfect, due in part to GW's obsession with randomness. If the weapons had a fixed number of shots it would really help them. As they are it is rolling dice to roll more dice.

GW have some good ideas, but execute them very poorly, it is something that isn't new, and I guess it isn't going to be fixed anytime soon. These faults allow them to produce a new edition every couple of years with the claim to be fixing the issues

 stonehorse wrote:
Blasts were annoying due to the gamey counter to them, which slowed the game down.

Plus the endless arguements created by the scattering.

Just bad all round.

The new mechanic isn't perfect, due in part to GW's obsession with randomness. If the weapons had a fixed number of shots it would really help them. As they are it is rolling dice to roll more dice.

GW have some good ideas, but execute them very poorly, it is something that isn't new, and I guess it isn't going to be fixed anytime soon. These faults allow them to produce a new edition every couple of years with the claim to be fixing the issues

the biggest problem with the current system is a battle cannon shot at a character not hits the character multiple times, that's easy eneugh to fix in a future edition though

 Jidmah wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Love how the GW kool aid has truly been drank with blasts. No, templates were good. The bass ackwards system we have right now is daft.

3 years ago it was points in AoS, now it's blasts. What is the next common gaming concept to become the equivelant of the devil?

Do you honestly miss measuring it out to ensure that every model is exactly 2" away from each other?

Let's be honest, how often in practice did that happen? Most people didn't give a gak.

How often? Every single game when you moved, ran or consolidated with an ork infantry model, for four editions. So ten thousands of times per ork player.

You basically auto-lost with orks if you didn't do it.


You cannot hand-wave this massive disadvantage of blast and flamer templates, no matter how bad their current implementation is.

Yes I can, as my anecdotal evidence contradicts yours.

Ugh, yeah forced challenges were pretty dumb.
A big bad demon prince or whatever gets completely held up by an infantry squad, because they were able to force it to miss a turn by ramming their sergeant down its throat. Oh wait, here comes another dirt cheap sergeant, open wide!

Making wounds inflicted in a challenge overflow into the squad was one of the things 7th actually got right. (or at least got better than 6th. Challenges still weren't a great mechanic)

Yeah, or you could just go to the battlereport forum on this board and find actual proof.

No, wait, you just want to be right, not to have an argument. Sorry.

 Overread wrote:
The old Tyranid "make what you want" section of the codex. One edition (I forget which, but the one that came with the launch of Old One Eye and Red Terror) allowed you to either use the standard codex rules or go to the back and totally customise the tyranids.

You could change stats, change weapon limits etc... If you wanted you could make an entire group of Venom Cannon holding warriors.

It was not only totally open to being broken, but I felt it added a layer of complexity way beyond what is healthy for a miniatures wargame of GW's general scale. If it were for 5 aside games fine, but for larger armies it was just way too much random stat changing and I'm glad it never became a standard thing within Tyranids nor within the game itself.



Otherwise a good few of the rules people dislike appear to not be " bad ideas" but bad rulings on good ideas. Having fire arcs on tanks isn't a bad idea, its a very neat idea; but it did need far better balancing so that tanks were viable and sensible.

The Tyranids codex was from 2001 and the possibility for customisation was not only restricted to bugs at that time. SM & IG could specialize too. There are people out there which like to have rules with detail and they had a blast with this book. Here is an example of a mutated Tyranid Warrior (TW) which has 3 biomorphs (max. six) and a big gun:

TW (14 pts.)
Unit size: 3 to 9
- Improved Senses (+ 1 BS, +2 pts.)
- Toxinkammer (+1 S, +3 pts.)
- Chitin plates (4+ save, +3 pts.)
- Biozidkanone (+10 pts.)
Total cost: 32 pts.

Profile: WS BS S T W I A Ld Save
TW 4 3 5 4 2 4 2 10 4+

Biozidkanone: Range STR AP SR
36´´ X+2 4 Assault X (in this case 2 because the model has two attacks), causes only glancing hits on vehicles.

I wouldn´t call this model op. It is more of a glass cannon. Okay, it is cheap for it´s offensive capabilities but the likes of krak missiles & whatnot will remove it instantly and anything with AP 4 is also really unhealthy for this bug.

Also remember that you were stuck with your mutated organisms and couldn´t change the biomorph loadout in later games for this unit.







Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Brutallica wrote:
Why are we doing happy clap songs about what we dont miss when this edition is a steaming pile of Tau?

Because people can then pretend that 8th is great.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
Agree with most of whats been said in here, I'll add the old Weapon Skill chart though. It doesn't matter if your the single best close combat fighter in the entire galaxy, you're still only hitting your opponent on 3's and they'll be hitting you back on 4's.

35 pages of Vehicle rules, all of which combined to make said vehicles utter trash unless they were a Fast Skimmer. Heck, the majority of unit type rules were terrible all told anyway.

WS:
To which edition of the rules does this apply? Models with poor WS (less than half of opponent) would hit the enemy only on 5+ (3rd to 5th).

The chart stayed the same in 3rd through 7th, and was useless in all 5 editions. It was very rare for an opponent to be forced to hit on 5's, it proved to be a dreadful way to demonstrate the supposed skill of the units involved.

To be clear, I'm not a huge fan of the fixed roll set up we now have, but it's considerably better than the screw up that was the old WS chart, and I'm not sure there is a perfect set up given the volume of dice that can be rolled.

 Jidmah wrote:
Yeah, or you could just go to the battlereport forum on this board and find actual proof.

No, wait, you just want to be right, not to have an argument. Sorry.

So firsthand experience and hundreds of games played over 2 decades count for nothing? Usually the people that insist on doing it are a bunch of bellends and not worth my time playing anyway as there would be several other pernickety things that'll make the game a chore to play as well.

sweeping advance.
rhino rush spam.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Love how the GW kool aid has truly been drank with blasts. No, templates were good. The bass ackwards system we have right now is daft.

3 years ago it was points in AoS, now it's blasts. What is the next common gaming concept to become the equivelant of the devil?

Templates were a fun idea for a skirmish game. For a game with triple digits worth of models on a board, units of 30 or even 50 models, and units shooting potentially a dozen or more templates, they got out of hand, *especially* in 7E. They're also an extra piece of losable stuff you have to buy and carry everywhere, and were a constant source of potential argument issues and rules weirdness. GW also never really was able to balance them well, particularly issues with things like earthshaker cannons where they were supposed to be multirole weapons that were *really* bad at actually hurting big things (e.g. they could only ever do 1 wound to an MC) or small blasts where something like a single grenade launcher in an infantry squad was more trouble to resolve than it was worth to shoot typically.

Where do we see blast templates remain in modern gaming? In relatively small scale skirmish games like Infinity and Warmahordes where they work far better.

 Brutallica wrote:
Why are we doing happy clap songs about what we dont miss when this edition is a steaming pile of Tau?

You didn't read the original post about trying to be more positive for a change did you? I mean, I know it's hard. This is the internet afterall and we're not allowed to like anything on the internet that isn't a kitten.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Love how the GW kool aid has truly been drank with blasts. No, templates were good. The bass ackwards system we have right now is daft.

3 years ago it was points in AoS, now it's blasts. What is the next common gaming concept to become the equivelant of the devil?

I'm going to disagree, if only because they were a source of many arguements, lead to slower games due to model spacing and generally just made the game more complex than it needed to be.

Sure, they were fun at times, but they were a headache a lot more often. About the only change I'd make to the current system is making it a single shot that rolls a set number of d3 for the hit it makes (with any hits that exceed the number of the models in the unit being discarded). That would make it closer to how the blasts used to work but with less arguing that the blasts themselves caused.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Yeah, or you could just go to the battlereport forum on this board and find actual proof.

No, wait, you just want to be right, not to have an argument. Sorry.

So firsthand experience and hundreds of games played over 2 decades count for nothing? Usually the people that insist on doing it are a bunch of bellends and not worth my time playing anyway as there would be several other pernickety things that'll make the game a chore to play as well.

What army do you play with your first hand experience? Sorry im not going to play with 150+ models and bunch them up nice and tight for you to kill in 1 shot with a large blast. If you played orks or tyranids you spaced your stuff out if you went up against blasts/templates. Not doing so was just putting yourself at a huge disadvantage

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Yeah, or you could just go to the battlereport forum on this board and find actual proof.

No, wait, you just want to be right, not to have an argument. Sorry.

So firsthand experience and hundreds of games played over 2 decades count for nothing? Usually the people that insist on doing it are a bunch of bellends and not worth my time playing anyway as there would be several other pernickety things that'll make the game a chore to play as well.

Nope, doesn't count for anything. Source: you.

Pretty glad blast templates are gone. Nothing screws up the momentum of a game like hovering a plastic disk 2 inches above a model and debating wether it's shadow is falling inside or outside a model's base. Ten minutes later you were waving a laser pointer over the damn thing and somebody was going away clenched. You'd finally give up and use a ruler instead, only to have people debate you on those measurements as well.

Also, that stupid little scatter direction dice. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? Let me grab this dice, whose direction facing can't be moved without accusations of cheating, over to where the shot actually landed and debate the exact angle for the next half hour...

Really was a clever solution searching for a problem.

Arson Fire wrote:
Ugh, yeah forced challenges were pretty dumb.
A big bad demon prince or whatever gets completely held up by an infantry squad, because they were able to force it to miss a turn by ramming their sergeant down its throat. Oh wait, here comes another dirt cheap sergeant, open wide!

Making wounds inflicted in a challenge overflow into the squad was one of the things 7th actually got right. (or at least got better than 6th. Challenges still weren't a great mechanic)

also the flip side of this happened to orks. a boyz squad is a ton of los str attacks with a strong hidden powerclaw in 5th which became just the low str boyz attacks when marine sarg with power sword or maul attacked and killed us with out 6+ armor save and suddenly our only way to deal with armor or high toughness models was gone.

 Imateria wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
Agree with most of whats been said in here, I'll add the old Weapon Skill chart though. It doesn't matter if your the single best close combat fighter in the entire galaxy, you're still only hitting your opponent on 3's and they'll be hitting you back on 4's.

35 pages of Vehicle rules, all of which combined to make said vehicles utter trash unless they were a Fast Skimmer. Heck, the majority of unit type rules were terrible all told anyway.

WS:
To which edition of the rules does this apply? Models with poor WS (less than half of opponent) would hit the enemy only on 5+ (3rd to 5th).

The chart stayed the same in 3rd through 7th, and was useless in all 5 editions. It was very rare for an opponent to be forced to hit on 5's, it proved to be a dreadful way to demonstrate the supposed skill of the units involved.

To be clear, I'm not a huge fan of the fixed roll set up we now have, but it's considerably better than the screw up that was the old WS chart, and I'm not sure there is a perfect set up given the volume of dice that can be rolled.

The chart was never a problem but giving a SM Cpt. only WS5 was stupid. WS 7 would have ensured that goons (WS 2 & 3) would only hit him on 5+. The fixed chart is just there to speed up play and break immersion.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
Agree with most of whats been said in here, I'll add the old Weapon Skill chart though. It doesn't matter if your the single best close combat fighter in the entire galaxy, you're still only hitting your opponent on 3's and they'll be hitting you back on 4's.

35 pages of Vehicle rules, all of which combined to make said vehicles utter trash unless they were a Fast Skimmer. Heck, the majority of unit type rules were terrible all told anyway.

WS:
To which edition of the rules does this apply? Models with poor WS (less than half of opponent) would hit the enemy only on 5+ (3rd to 5th).

The chart stayed the same in 3rd through 7th, and was useless in all 5 editions. It was very rare for an opponent to be forced to hit on 5's, it proved to be a dreadful way to demonstrate the supposed skill of the units involved.

To be clear, I'm not a huge fan of the fixed roll set up we now have, but it's considerably better than the screw up that was the old WS chart, and I'm not sure there is a perfect set up given the volume of dice that can be rolled.

The chart was never a problem but giving a SM Cpt. only WS5 was stupid. WS 7 would have ensured that goons (WS 2 & 3) would only hit him on 5+. The fixed chart is just there to speed up play and break immersion.

The current way would be fine if more characters had ways to apply negatives to those they were attacking. A Captain is skilled enough that I could buy him inflicting a -1 penalty on Custodes, who would still hit him often and really hurt him.

It would be more rules to add though so I'm not so sure it's worth it.

Agreed, the chart was kinda clunky but it's odd to me now that a model hits a grot with the same reliability as a primarch. my issue with the chart was that almost everything in the game was WS 3-5. It made actually comparing feel redundant.

Armor Facings
Hull Points
Weapon Arcs
Formations
Look Out, Sir!
Riptide Wings
Wraith knights
Having to carry around 5 books just to play one army.
Allies


Pretty much all of it. This edition is the best. I've played more games since July 2017 than I did the entire three years previous. And it just keeps getting better!

Deleted

 Bi'ios wrote:
Seperate USRs in the rulebook
Firing arcs
AP system

I actually really liked the psychic phase from 7th. It felt a lot more significant than the current one does. I dislike the way psychics work this edition.

I wouldn't care about the 1 Attempt Per Power rule if we at least had generic tables to choose from again. As is, it's super limiting.

That a lascannon to the face instantly killed 90% of the game unless they had a bike in which case it is but a flesh wound.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Imateria wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
Agree with most of whats been said in here, I'll add the old Weapon Skill chart though. It doesn't matter if your the single best close combat fighter in the entire galaxy, you're still only hitting your opponent on 3's and they'll be hitting you back on 4's.

35 pages of Vehicle rules, all of which combined to make said vehicles utter trash unless they were a Fast Skimmer. Heck, the majority of unit type rules were terrible all told anyway.

WS:
To which edition of the rules does this apply? Models with poor WS (less than half of opponent) would hit the enemy only on 5+ (3rd to 5th).

The chart stayed the same in 3rd through 7th, and was useless in all 5 editions. It was very rare for an opponent to be forced to hit on 5's, it proved to be a dreadful way to demonstrate the supposed skill of the units involved.

To be clear, I'm not a huge fan of the fixed roll set up we now have, but it's considerably better than the screw up that was the old WS chart, and I'm not sure there is a perfect set up given the volume of dice that can be rolled.

The chart was never a problem but giving a SM Cpt. only WS5 was stupid. WS 7 would have ensured that goons (WS 2 & 3) would only hit him on 5+. The fixed chart is just there to speed up play and break immersion.

The WS chart was just crap - Ohh look my Bloodthirster/Celestine/Lelith Hesperax etc etc can only hit a Gretcin on a 3+ FFS

Ice_can wrote:
That a lascannon to the face instantly killed 90% of the game unless they had a bike in which case it is but a flesh wound.

That one was always amusing, its one of the big reasons having a damage stat back in is great

That said, Bikes in general the last couple editions were particularly egregious.

"Yeah, you can get a Tac marine for 15pts...*or* for 20pts get the same thing but with T5, twin linked guns, Relentless, an extra charge attack, double the basic movement, the abilitu to Turboboost, no slowdown through Terrain, and the absurdly abuseable Jink ability"

And the less said about Eldar jetbikes the better

Bikes were way under costed last edition, especially with the ability to make them troops. Though I do want to pick up a few of the FW ones, they look sweet.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
That a lascannon to the face instantly killed 90% of the game unless they had a bike in which case it is but a flesh wound.

That one was always amusing, its one of the big reasons having a damage stat back in is great

That said, Bikes in general the last couple editions were particularly egregious.

"Yeah, you can get a Tac marine for 15pts...*or* for 20pts get the same thing but with T5, twin linked guns, Relentless, an extra charge attack, double the basic movement, the abilitu to Turboboost, no slowdown through Terrain, and the absurdly abuseable Jink ability"

And the less said about Eldar jetbikes the better

Was that the fault of the Biker being too good though? You could nerf Bikers to the ground all you wanted, but it wouldn't have made Tactical Marines more appealing.

Bikers were just good. They weren't broken. That was only as troops too, otherwise you NEVER saw them.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
That a lascannon to the face instantly killed 90% of the game unless they had a bike in which case it is but a flesh wound.

That one was always amusing, its one of the big reasons having a damage stat back in is great

That said, Bikes in general the last couple editions were particularly egregious.

"Yeah, you can get a Tac marine for 15pts...*or* for 20pts get the same thing but with T5, twin linked guns, Relentless, an extra charge attack, double the basic movement, the abilitu to Turboboost, no slowdown through Terrain, and the absurdly abuseable Jink ability"

And the less said about Eldar jetbikes the better

Was that the fault of the Biker being too good though? You could nerf Bikers to the ground all you wanted, but it wouldn't have made Tactical Marines more appealing.

Bikers were just good. They weren't broken. That was only as troops too, otherwise you NEVER saw them.

Marine bikes were just the easiest direct comparison, bikes in general had a rather of absurd number of advantages over infantry equivalents. Guardians vs Windriders had the same issue.

Not saying that Bikes were the most egregiously broken thing in and of themselves, but they were ridiculously overloaded with abilities and special rules next to infantry.

Jink in particular was superbusted, though not exclusive to Bikes, no other unit could use it quite as effectively.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
That a lascannon to the face instantly killed 90% of the game unless they had a bike in which case it is but a flesh wound.

That one was always amusing, its one of the big reasons having a damage stat back in is great

That said, Bikes in general the last couple editions were particularly egregious.

"Yeah, you can get a Tac marine for 15pts...*or* for 20pts get the same thing but with T5, twin linked guns, Relentless, an extra charge attack, double the basic movement, the abilitu to Turboboost, no slowdown through Terrain, and the absurdly abuseable Jink ability"

And the less said about Eldar jetbikes the better

Was that the fault of the Biker being too good though? You could nerf Bikers to the ground all you wanted, but it wouldn't have made Tactical Marines more appealing.

Bikers were just good. They weren't broken. That was only as troops too, otherwise you NEVER saw them.

Marine bikes were just the easiest direct comparison, bikes in general had a rather of absurd number of advantages over infantry equivalents. Guardians vs Windriders had the same issue.

Not saying that Bikes were the most egregiously broken thing in and of themselves, but they were ridiculously overloaded with abilities and special rules next to infantry.

Jink in particular was superbusted, though not exclusive to Bikes, no other unit could use it quite as effectively.

Outside those Marine Bikers though you feel that on, only Scatterbikes actually created an issue. Not Shining Spears, not Chaos Bikers, not Attack Bikes, nothing. Only issue is only Marine Bikers could become troops, and that's honestly a non-issue based on their performance.

Flying monsterous creatures who cold fire weapon out of their arse. When my Stormeaven had to be carefully lined up for that single shot.

Flamers murdering flyers.

Terrain and cover rules that mattered and made the battlefield feel as realistic as it was painted and modeled to be.

Mortal wounds.

Command point spam.

errr wait!
MaybeI am getting ahead of myself, here.

Deleted

I still play 3rd Edition. What I DON'T miss from previous editions is 2nd Edition. From what I can tell, everything from 5th on up is them trying to ram 2nd Edition back into the 3rd Edition framework, ending in a quasi revamp in the way of 8th, but with more 2nd than 3rd left in it. This is why I'm not bothering to stay current, and while I will play 3rd as long as I have a circle of opponents.

BrianDavion wrote:
Hull points. They weren't entirely a bad idea but when even a land raider only had 4 and you could get one with a glancing shot it made tanks laughably weak.

I liked that they added hull points, the mistake (IMO) was that they didn't give the vehicles enough and didn't give them an armour save to (partially) compensate, (and actually encourage anti-tank weapon use against them instead of as many Autocannons/scatter lasers as you could manage)

My personal "glad to be rid of it" rule is Instant Death. I could count on one hand the amount of times my T3 characters didn't die to the first wound allocated to them...