There's an old saw about a boat* gradually having parts replaced over the years, and how sooner or later it reaches a point where you have to stop and ask if it's still the same boat. After a number of years of getting steadily more fed up with 40K, I realised that this was where the game was at. I started playing in 2nd edition. I stuck with the game through 3rd and 4th (despite rather disliking the state of the game by the end of 4th edition), had a blast through 5th, and then along came 6th edition. This edition introduced some new stuff that I liked, some other stuff that I liked in theory but disliked in implementation, and other things that, for me, kind of ruined the game. It took a while for me to notice, but eventually I realised (halfway through a Combat Patrol tournament at Adepticon, in which I won the game entirely because of the terrain eating my opponent's army) that playing the game just wasn't fun any more. But I stuck around anyway. I wasn't playing, but I tried to keep up with the rules, in the hope that at some point the game would click back into line again, as had happened with 4th/5th edition.

It didn't. 7th edition took the things I disliked about 6th edition and made them worse. And then 8th edition came along, and I finally realised that this was no longer even remotely the same boat that I climbed aboard way back in 1994. It still had the same name on the prow, and it still had some of the same fittings here and there, but overall, design-wise, and performance-wise, it was a very different entity.

But here's the thing - unlike the metaphorical boat, the previous versions of the game still exist. And once I accepted that the current game was actually a different game that just happens to share the same name, and that it was extremely unlikely that it was going to turn back into a game that I was remotely interested in playing, I realised that instead of sitting here in this boat that I hate, complaining about seat trims, I could simply go back to a version of the boat that I liked.

And that's what I did. I had a chat to a mate who I used to play 2nd edition with, and it turned out he was interested in getting back into the game, and had a similar lack of interest in the current rules as well. I've spent what little free time I've had available for it over the last 6 months or so digging out all of my 2nd edition cards and templates, looking for resources online, retrofitting my armies back to 2nd edition status, with some modifications here and there... I'm working on a revised Necron army list, for example, incorporating Wargear cards like the other factions had, and adding in some units and options that were introduced in 3rd edition and later. And once we can actually start getting together and gaming again, that's what we'll be playing.

40K, but our way.


If you're unhappy with the current state of the game, why not give it a try? Think back to the last version of the game were you were actually having fun, and play that. The best part is that once you're no longer being driven by the release schedule, you're also free to modify the game to suit yourself. Think 4th edition was the best, but really hated the transport rules? Modify them. Borrow the vehicle rules from a different edition, or write your own.

Obviously, if you're reliant on pick-up games in a store for your gaming fix, this is complicated a bit, and may take some work. You might need to seek out some like-minded gamers and pre-arrange some games. You might need to find a different venue. Maybe there will be some local tournament or campaign organisers who can be talked into organising some retro events. And, of course, if you don't want to have to put any effort in, and just want a game that you can pick up and play, then this approach probably isn't going to be for you... but it might still be better than not playing at all, or playing but not enjoying it, because you hate the current rules.

Just some food for thought. A hobby is supposed to be fun. If you're not having fun, change it. Don't wait for someone else to fix it... who knows when (or if) that will happen?





(*or a broom, or an axe, or a hammer, or probably an array of other implements, take your pick)

I'm right there with you, friend.

Last year a friend and I started replaying Space Hulk and some 2nd edition. For a while before the whole COVID thing I went back and forth between 2nd and 8th.

2nd ed is great fun. I've got all the codexes, many of the White Dwarfs, and all the cards from the main and Dark Millenium box. Unfortunately I haven't been able to pick it back up since quarantine and he just had his second kid. But while there's not much gaming action, I've been slowly workng on terrain to improve the table for when we can get back to it.

I'd also be down for 3rd-4th Ed (or hybrid/house ruled), but finding people for it would be really tricky atm.

Aww, look at those marines running around in independent units and not bunching up for aura bonusses. How nice!

Nice terrain!

I actually think of all of the versions of 40K to date, 5th edition is the best written for functionality. It wasn't perfect - the vehicle rules needed some tweaking, likewise casualty removal for multi-wound units, and I preferred the 3rd edition area terrain rules. But overall it played well, and had reached (IMO) a good balance point between playability and level of detail.

But the most fun I ever had playing 40K was during 2nd edition, despite all of its flaws.

 insaniak wrote:
Nice terrain!

I actually think of all of the versions of 40K to date, 5th edition is the best written for functionality. It wasn't perfect - the vehicle rules needed some tweaking, likewise casualty removal for multi-wound units, and I preferred the 3rd edition area terrain rules. But overall it played well, and had reached (IMO) a good balance point between playability and level of detail.

But the most fun I ever had playing 40K was during 2nd edition, despite all of its flaws.

Thanks! There's more terrain on the way, including toothpick-spike plants

I think the ideal would be a hybridization of 3rd-4th-5th. I can't personally recall anything I liked in 5th over 3rd/4th, but there's probably something. Imo the 4th ed codexes were the high point of codex functionality. 5th ed started blanderizing, but it did some good things too, like giving Bolt Pistols and Frag+Krak to marines as standard equipment, (I think it gave Guardsmen Frag by default, too. Though I think the game played better prior to the inflation of special weapons (Sternguard, for example) that came with 5th. There's some mix in there which is ideal.

It'd be interesting to try those editions with modern split-fire. That would change things quite a bit too.

Nice Ship of Theseus analogy. Yup, the game is a slowly changing boat. Each new datasheet, each new edition, each new army, each new "ancillary" addition - each one is a new plank or sheet or winch. Each one pushed by GW as making the game better, but even if that were true it would still mean that it's no longer the same.

If you find previous editions speak more to you, then I hope you and your group find success in Oldhammer!

That said, I don't think I could. I hated 7th edition, but my favourite army is Genestealer Cult, and they just didn't exist before that. So 8th and 9th have been quite good to me.

 Yarium wrote:
Nice Ship of Theseus analogy. Yup, the game is a slowly changing boat. Each new datasheet, each new edition, each new army, each new "ancillary" addition - each one is a new plank or sheet or winch. Each one pushed by GW as making the game better, but even if that were true it would still mean that it's no longer the same.

If you find previous editions speak more to you, then I hope you and your group find success in Oldhammer!

That said, I don't think I could. I hated 7th edition, but my favourite army is Genestealer Cult, and they just didn't exist before that. So 8th and 9th have been quite good to me.

Hehehe. Genesstealer Cults existed in 2nd Ed. as part of the Tyranid book.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
Nice Ship of Theseus analogy. Yup, the game is a slowly changing boat. Each new datasheet, each new edition, each new army, each new "ancillary" addition - each one is a new plank or sheet or winch. Each one pushed by GW as making the game better, but even if that were true it would still mean that it's no longer the same.

If you find previous editions speak more to you, then I hope you and your group find success in Oldhammer!

That said, I don't think I could. I hated 7th edition, but my favourite army is Genestealer Cult, and they just didn't exist before that. So 8th and 9th have been quite good to me.

Hehehe. Genesstealer Cults existed in 2nd Ed. as part of the Tyranid book.

Yes but did they have Atalan Ridgerunners?

(More awesome, they had Cult Limos)

But for real; they didn't have half the stuff they have now. I love a bunch of their new stuff. Plus, I started at the very start of 3rd, so I couldn't OldHammer that if I tried

 Yarium wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
Nice Ship of Theseus analogy. Yup, the game is a slowly changing boat. Each new datasheet, each new edition, each new army, each new "ancillary" addition - each one is a new plank or sheet or winch. Each one pushed by GW as making the game better, but even if that were true it would still mean that it's no longer the same.

If you find previous editions speak more to you, then I hope you and your group find success in Oldhammer!

That said, I don't think I could. I hated 7th edition, but my favourite army is Genestealer Cult, and they just didn't exist before that. So 8th and 9th have been quite good to me.

Hehehe. Genesstealer Cults existed in 2nd Ed. as part of the Tyranid book.

Yes but did they have Atalan Ridgerunners?

(More awesome, they had Cult Limos)

But for real; they didn't have half the stuff they have now. I love a bunch of their new stuff. Plus, I started at the very start of 3rd, so I couldn't OldHammer that if I tried

That's true. And those biker models are super cool. Given the nature of 2nd Ed and the fact that you could only play now with a friendly crowd, I don't think you'd have an issue converting them over. (You could even use the rules for Squat Bikers).

Actually, you know what? I think I've got a Citadel Journal with the 3rd ed Genestealer Cult list. . .

Edit: Hmm, can't find it. Too bad. Anyways, it's a thing that exists, so there's a chance for the GSC for 3rd-5th if you ever felt the need.

Also worth pointing out that for those who don't find the current 40K rules to their taste, there are a lot of other rulesets out there these days, for which models can be converted. I worked up a bare-bones Space Marine army list for Maelstrom's Edge (for which you can download the core rules for free) a few years back, and I'm currently revising that to add in a bunch of extra stuff. But there are also various 'use whatever miniatures you have' rulesets out there now, many of them free.

While it's often the road of least resistance, you don't actually have to stick with a game if you don't enjoy it anymore.

 insaniak wrote:
Also worth pointing out that for those who don't find the current 40K rules to their taste, there are a lot of other rulesets out there these days, for which models can be converted. I worked up a bare-bones Space Marine army list for Maelstrom's Edge (for which you can download the core rules for free) a few years back, and I'm currently revising that to add in a bunch of extra stuff. But there are also various 'use whatever miniatures you have' rulesets out there now, many of them free.

While it's often the road of least resistance, you don't actually have to stick with a game if you don't enjoy it anymore.

But Can You Get A Game?

That's usually the crux of it. Like, I can play 2nd ed with one person I know. When the shops were open I could usually stroll in on 40K night and get a pick up game with a stranger. That's a biiig, friggin, deal.

And it's not like I won't enjoy the game either. I just don't like what GW is doing to the universe/lore/design-ecosystem.

 Insectum7 wrote:

But Can You Get A Game?

That's usually the crux of it. Like, I can play 2nd ed with one person I know. When the shops were open I could usually stroll in on 40K night and get a pick up game with a stranger. That's a biiig, friggin, deal.

And it's not like I won't enjoy the game either. I just don't like what GW is doing to the universe/lore/design-ecosystem.

That is where I am at now. While I would love to go back to an earlier edition... it would just be myself and one other opponent playing each other.

While I have moved away from 40k (sold all my armies), I have picked up enough neat Oldhammer 40k models to make a few Kill Teams, however their main purpose is to be used for other sci-fi skirmish systems my main opponent and I play.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:

That is where I am at now. While I would love to go back to an earlier edition... it would just be myself and one other opponent playing each other..

Yup, that's likely where I'll be for a while, as well, although I do have one or two other people I can potentially rope in later. But playing against one recurring opponent is, IMO, vastly preferable to playing a game I don't enjoy anymore just because it's easier to find opponents. YMMV, obviously.

 insaniak wrote:
It didn't. 7th edition took the things I disliked about 6th edition and made them worse.

At the risk of opening a can of worms, would you mind elaborating? I never played 6th or 7th (left early 5th, came back in 8th), but I've recently tried out Horus Heresy which I understand is based on 7th, and didn't find it as unpleasant as I'd been braced for. Just curious as to whether it's a YMMV thing or if HH is significantly different from 7th.

I haven't played Horus Heresy, but I understand that it has all the benefits of the edition with none of all the INSANITY of poor releases that made it horrible. It doesn't have:

- D-strength weapons
- Knights (in 7th they encouraged really bad game-play with how they interacted with the rules)
- 2+ FnP
- Invisibility psychic power

Take those things and the awful gameplay they encouraged, and I'm sure 7th edition would be fine.

Yup, the big issues for me were the inclusion of superheavies and D-weapons as a part of the standard game, and formations resulting in seemingly identical units within an army having different rules on the table. But beyond that, there were a lot of little mechanical things that bugged me. Mostly not big problems in isolation, but that all combined made for a less enjoyable experience overall.

Taking a break from the hobby or just playing a different edition is excellent advice!

I, for one, really enjoyed 8th and a good chunk of the lore around it, so much more than I did 6th and 7th, but I largely ignored anything that wasn't "core" - so Psychic Awakening, and vast swathes of my codex, I just didn't use. I liked the simpler experience of basic datasheets, and still do.

And with what seem to be a focus on more verbose "watertight" rules and more "balanced" missions with secondary objectives and all that, I'm not sure I'll be sitting down much for 9th. Feels a bit too complex and bloaty for my taste. I'll be quite content in 8th, and retrofitting "9th" units like Eradicators and Bladeguard into my standard Primaris army.

But yeah - I really do encourage people, if they're not enjoying the current game, to play older editions or gamemodes that they prefer, rather than complaining.

 insaniak wrote:
Think back to the last version of the game were you were actually having fun, and play that.

It wouldn't be overly complicated to convert newer units or rules for use with older editions, just tedious. In terms of points values in 2nd and 3rd you could tell they were working off of a formula based on statlines/weapon stats, at least for troops. For me there were always very distinct pros and cons with each edition, but I'd have to agree that 5th was the closest to polished 40k ever got. Close enough to invest the effort into adapting, anyway. You'd probably need nothing more than a little chloroform to get people to try it.

I'm right there with ya OP. I started with the hobby at the beginning of 2nd edition, took a break after college, came back briefly with 4th edition, took a long break, and recently came back at the beginning of 8th edition. I actually really liked 8th edition with just the core rules and Indexes, before it got bogged down with too many supplements and CP/stratagem shenanigans - it makes for a simple and fun beer and pretzels game. I also enjoy the new versions of Apocalypse (with standard 2000 point sized armies) and Kill Team.

However, I am finding 9th edition to be needlessly more complex, especially the matched play missions, objectives, and scoring, with GW's obvious intent of taking over the tournament scene. Like many others, I don't care for the relentless pushing of Space Marines the last year or so, at the expense of attention for other factions. With 20+ types of bolt weapons, faction abilities, subfaction abilities, warlord traits, doctrines, protocols, on top of the growing card game nonsense of strategems, the staggered release of army, unit, and weapon updates, coupled with the lack of games due to COVID, I'm at the point where I don't care about the new edition anymore.

I recently picked up a bunch of used rulebooks and codexes from older editions and found I like the 4th edition books the most, including rules, fluff, and art, with some 5th edition rules and codex tweaks thrown in. While I also had fun during 2nd edition, I prefer a less complex game these days and don't miss all of the cards, datafaxes, tables, and D&D dice necessary to play that game. So I think for the time being, I'm going to stick to playing at home (and teaching my sons eventually when they get a little older), 8th Index-only, 4th/5th edition, Apocalypse, and Kill Team. Once things return to normal I may try a few games of the current edition at the local game shop after all codex arms race has settled down a bit, but I'd much rather find some like-minded folks who enjoy earlier editions if possible.

One of the issues is deciding which edition to go back to. Each edition has some critical flaw that makes other people not want to go back to it, so the generality of the present edition keeps it more attractive.

I personally would go back to 5th edition, but you know, the whole deal with Wound Allocation.


Though really, I would say I was pretty happy with pre-SM2.0 8th edition. I could stay there, and it honestly felt like the best it had been in a long time. And then SM2.0 and supplements happened.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
One of the issues is deciding which edition to go back to. Each edition has some critical flaw that makes other people not want to go back to it, so the generality of the present edition keeps it more attractive.

I personally would go back to 5th edition, but you know, the whole deal with Wound Allocation.


Though really, I would say I was pretty happy with pre-SM2.0 8th edition. I could stay there, and it honestly felt like the best it had been in a long time. And then SM2.0 and supplements happened.

I agree about each edition having at least one critical flaw. Fortunately, many of those flaws can be fixed with a few simple house rules, including replacing the offending flaw with the rule(s) from an earlier or later edition (ex. I happen to much prefer 4th edition's wound allocation rules, but prefer 5th edition's rending rules).

I agree about the SM 2.0 supplements. The 8th SM 2.0 codex was actually not too bad by itself, but the supplements (as well as all the rules bloat from Vigilus and Psychic Awakening books IMO) really destroyed the solid game 8th had become.

 insaniak wrote:
Yup, the big issues for me were the inclusion of superheavies and D-weapons as a part of the standard game, and formations resulting in seemingly identical units within an army having different rules on the table. But beyond that, there were a lot of little mechanical things that bugged me. Mostly not big problems in isolation, but that all combined made for a less enjoyable experience overall.

I was ok with the theory of D weapons, after all, the Vortex Grenade and Wraithcannon were proto D weapons. Formations as an idea I thought were pretty cool. . . but they got bonkers.

Then the supplemental books, and the 2nd round of psychic powers was just out of this world insane. A power that lets you move whole pieces of terrain with models on them . . . some really bonkers stuff.

 Yarium wrote:
I haven't played Horus Heresy, but I understand that it has all the benefits of the edition with none of all the INSANITY of poor releases that made it horrible. It doesn't have:

- D-strength weapons
- Knights (in 7th they encouraged really bad game-play with how they interacted with the rules)
- 2+ FnP
- Invisibility psychic power

Take those things and the awful gameplay they encouraged, and I'm sure 7th edition would be fine.

That's really interesting. 2+ FNP and Invisibility sound like awful mechanics to deal with, and I can understand how they would sour people on the ruleset. My usual opponent is a Horus Heresy player through and through, with only tangential interest in 9th, and has expressed that he'd be open to me fielding my Tyranids within the Heresy ruleset. Since getting to play HH for myself, I've become more open to the idea- as a couple of topics have already discussed ad nauseam, it feels to me more like a traditional wargame, and I find has actually gone faster than 9th due to the lack of stratagems and far fewer rerolls. Most of all, it's 'late' enough that there's rules support for all the stuff I have, which wouldn't be the case if we played using 4th or 5th.

From what I can tell, there are Knights in HH; but I believe they're subject to a 25% points limit as with other LoWs, so can't comprise the entirety of an army.

I have to agree with the sentiment that 8th right before SM2.0 was pretty good. I felt that Bolter Discipline and points adjustments did a lot to bring Marines in line with other armies, before we really kicked off this death spiral of increasing lethality.

 Gnarlly wrote:

I agree about each edition having at least one critical flaw. Fortunately, many of those flaws can be fixed with a few simple house rules, including replacing the offending flaw with the rule(s) from an earlier or later edition (ex. I happen to much prefer 4th edition's wound allocation rules, but prefer 5th edition's rending rules).

Yup, the ability to patch rules flaws yourself without having to worry about how that patch may interact with future releases is one of the big bonuses of playing a previous edition.

And I would agree that inserting 4th edition's wound allocation into 5th edition is the way to go.

I started at the very end of 5th, only had one game in that Edition which felt pretty fiddly because of wound allocation. But I played quite a lot in 6th and even more in 7th and I can say, for me the rules have only gotten better since then and I consider the 6th / 7th Edition to be pretty aweful. 8th was a great refresh and even though I think 9th didn't have to be a new Edition and could have been done in a CA, for me it feels like the best Edition I witnessed so far. Whenever people bring up HH, I'm like, nah, it works despite 7th edition because Alan Bligh was great, but if they had moved to 8th the game wouldn't be in the dying state where it's today.
40K still needs Alternative activations or phases and once they introduce that it'll be the Edition I'll stick to.

The difficulty with trying to rewind is that you still need people to play with. I suspect that most of the people complaining endlessly on Dakka are people who dislike 9e but whose playgroup is happy with it and can't convince anyone to play anything else. The fixation on "GW needs to fix the current official rules" probably springs from dealing mostly with people who insist on playing only the current official rules.

Everyone at my flgs knows that anytime anyone wants to play RT/2ND I'm down. smaller games on big tables with flying rodent gak insane stuff going on will always appeal to me...unfortunately the minute I go on about vortex grenades/psyker powers moving around the table all game the younger guys all of the sudden no longer seem interested. well that and the rolling to see which chart you roll on....

Racerguy180 wrote:
unfortunately the minute I go on about vortex grenades/psyker powers moving around the table all game the younger guys all of the sudden no longer seem interested.

So... don't do that...?

I mean, it's definitely possible to build a 2nd edition army without taking Vortex Grenades. Also, Vortex Detonators are a thing.

but it's fun

How?

Sure, Vortex Grenades are awesome, but unless your 'fun' is 'having people refuse to play against you', they're not going to be particularly exciting if people simply refuse to play you as a result of you threatening to use them.

^True story. My buddy was all good for cheesing out his list until I Chaplain-jumping-off-bike-throwing-Vortex-Grenade-killing-Warphead-and-Blinding-half-the-army-with-his-Rosarius-save.* Then he stopped playing, lol.

*Combined with fusillade of Plasma Missiles with some expansions breaking his gunline and forcing models to move so they couldn't use their heavy weapons.

I was extra mean in 2nd ed.

I dunno, dodging stuff you have no control over while trying to kill your enemy presented a unique challenge. I like to be challenged by external factors; night fighting, acid rain, meteor showers.

I'm ok not playing it, just wish more people were open to the possibility of stuff randomly happening.

Open war deck has enuff random gak going on for me nowadays, which the same people that say no to RT/2ND have no problem with(which is weird).

The thing about 2nd is the number of actions/options available to you felt greater. So even if random stuff was thrown at you, there seemed to be more solutions available to address it.

I'll probably not go back to another edition, but rather just go play Epic 40k as that's where I started and have the fondest memories.

Otherwise I have been exceedingly lucky and have a good group of people I can play with who are not stinkin' grots about the game and are willing to play for fun. So even if the next SM codex is the end-all book some want to predict I will still be able to play against people who are doing it for fun and not min-maxing the hell out of the book.

5th edition for me was the most fun as I was a new player and very green as someone who'd never played a wargame before. When I take off my rose tinted goggles, I can see what the issues were like wound allocation for multi-wound units, tanks rules needing to be fixed, and power creep from certain armies like Space Wolves (long fang spam) and Grey Knights. If I went back now and sat down with my opponent to make fair games, sure that would work, but getting the game is the issue for me.

I played through 6th, which overall left a bad taste in my mouth dealing with a 4th edition Eldar codex where I couldn't win and moving to a broken 6th edition codex where people wouldn't play me even though they'd not even seen my list. I didn't get far into 7th and decided to leave the game for a few years because it was just more of the stuff I didn't like.

8th for the most part was an edition I enjoyed, with ITC fixing a lot of the issues the core game had and making me a more competitive player. Marines eventually ruined my fun in the game, and nerfs didn't really fix a lot of the issues in the game. Also, legends and removing a lot of the datasheets without models really killed some of the enjoyment too.

I've had a few games of 9th, and while it's a cool and interesting new edition, I can't give an opinion on whether I enjoy it yet. I find myself more and more tempted by Horus Heresy for what seems to be a fairly balanced ruleset by getting rid of the shenanigans of 7th which I hated. Again though, will I get a game where I live? Probably not, and mini-marines won't be around for much longer so I'd say support will disappear.

At least you went through all the rule changes and had a vague understanding of what was happening. Try stopping just around 4th edition coming out and then just dropping back in now without a clue! I think to continue your Theseus' ship analogy, I can very clearly see the ship isn't the same. Because my two interactions are so far apart the game changes that everyone focuses on make no odds to me. Particularly as I've not had a chance to really sit down and read the rules.

I took the dive into 9th because the crusade narrative play sounded genuinely interesting. Damned if I know if it'll be good.

EDIT: when I dropped back into the hobby in general the first thing I did was play some 6th edition WHFB because that to me was the best edition. You don't have to play the newer rules when you have other stuff available!

If I could rewind all the local players who bailed out through 6th and onwards yes...

5e was the most popular but there is no getting away from the massive codex creep it suffered.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Also worth pointing out that for those who don't find the current 40K rules to their taste, there are a lot of other rulesets out there these days, for which models can be converted. I worked up a bare-bones Space Marine army list for Maelstrom's Edge (for which you can download the core rules for free) a few years back, and I'm currently revising that to add in a bunch of extra stuff. But there are also various 'use whatever miniatures you have' rulesets out there now, many of them free.

While it's often the road of least resistance, you don't actually have to stick with a game if you don't enjoy it anymore.

But Can You Get A Game?

That's usually the crux of it. Like, I can play 2nd ed with one person I know. When the shops were open I could usually stroll in on 40K night and get a pick up game with a stranger. That's a biiig, friggin, deal.

Pretty much this and it's a vicious cycle when it comes to both games from other companies and even within editions.

People stick to the Party Line because they know it's being supported and what most people will do. 9/10 times the people saying "just play the edition/ruleset/game you want bro, none is stopping you!" aren't the ones actually doing that. People don't pick up new games or try old editions because the odds of them finding likeminded sods local to them is slim to nil.

Been playing 6th edition WFB for a couple of years, some games of 3rd 3dition 40k, and we're now moving onto 2nd edition. It looks a lot of silly fun, a bit random in places. Vortex and virus weapons are out.

We may even do it in 15mm - there's quite a scene out there, using Vanguard minis (anything will do for Guard!) and 3D printing.

We tend to make lists that look like actual armies - the bulk of the force is troops, with appropriate support. Even that makes a difference to how the game plays.

Don't like a rule? Discuss it, try alternatives, make a decision. That was the ethos of Oldhammer in the beginning - take responsibility for your fun, don't leave it up to a company then complain about it.

I'm lucky that I have gaming friends who have a similar outlook.

The older books are cheaper than new ones too - the complete 40k 3rd edition book set cost £50 in total, and only took a month to hunt down. 2nd edition is looking a bit more expensive - again, it seems to be becoming more popular.

There have always been whispers of people playing prior editions. The switch from 2nd to 3rd was profound enough that some never left 2nd, and then every edition probably drove another clutch of guys in a basement or garage to keep playing their favorite edition. The real uptick began with 6th and 7th editions, which were bloated and frankly NOT FUN. Playing 7th edition against a good army was like doing your taxes.

I think its a great idea to explore playing older editions. Personally, having played every edition since 3rd, I think 8th, and now 9th, have the best "core" rules. You can quibble about the missions, but the biggest flaws I see in 9th are the codex ecosystem. Unfortuantely, that's the hardest part to rebuild.

Still, my dream for a hybrid homebrew uses modern 40k rules, which are clean and streamlined, with home made army lists closer to what 3rd edition offered.

+100% OP!

I'm getting back into the game, after starting out in earnest with 2nd and playing up through the early stages of 5th edition. I briefly came back in 8th edition and decided I just didn't like the ethos of how the rules work. It's not the same feeling game at all.

In asking around and digging through forms similar as this, it seems like a large number of people call out 5th edition as a high watermark in the game. It felt like a proper skirmish game focused on units and position and maneuver. While list building was always a core part of the gameplay, after 5th edition things seemed to get crazier and crazier. Less emphasis on a traditional Force Organization Chart and more about combining multiple wacky detachments, using formations (7th edition) and gaming detachments / stratagems in 9th + 9th. All of these shifts seemed to just be de-emphasizing the basic troop unit - which is the cornerstone of game's lore and character IMHO.

All this said, I implore the OP (and everyone else) that is looking back to older editions to check out ProHammer.

* ProHammer is built on 5th edition
* Refines a few of 5th edition's weaker aspects (vehicle damage tables, wound allocation shenanigans, etc.)
* Pulls in a few old-time rules from 2nd edition (proper overwatrch, declared firing, etc)
* Incorporates some "best of rules" from 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th where they make sense (split fire, go to ground, etc.)
* Adds some compatibility options for using 6th + 7th edition codex (if players agree)

Through all of this, I'm trying to retain the classic character and feel of what I loved about 40K while making the game tactically diverse and as interesting as possible (while still keeping the basic game structure in place). I also want to cut down on illogical or "gamey" feeling rules and make the game as intuitive to play as it can be. Of course, I don't want it to spiral into too much complexity either. It's a balancing act.

Ultimately, I want ProHammer to feel like the version of Warhammer that many of us were always waiting for. I'm totally open to discussing the rules and making adjustments to get it working smoothly and reliability.

If you're interested, check it out!

I'm starting to get some games organized over Table Top Simulator for it

Started at the beging of 8th. Every month was worse expiriance, to a point where end of 2019 I didn't even want to play that much. 9th is awesome comparing to that. Better rules, the units I own and like, are actualy okey. I don't even mind GW puting rules that directly work against my army, because it is still nothing comparing to the stuff they did in 8th. If it stays that way for another 6 months, it it is going to make buying in to w40k actualy worth it.

Ship of Theseus.

And no. 9th edition's core is the best version of 40k I've played. The point changes were wackadoodled and it's far from perfect and there's huge potential to muck it up in the near future but right now, I'm having a lot of fun with it. Way more than I did in 6, 7th, and the middle part of 8th where I quit to play sigmar for about a year.

 insaniak wrote:

 Gnarlly wrote:

I agree about each edition having at least one critical flaw. Fortunately, many of those flaws can be fixed with a few simple house rules, including replacing the offending flaw with the rule(s) from an earlier or later edition (ex. I happen to much prefer 4th edition's wound allocation rules, but prefer 5th edition's rending rules).

Yup, the ability to patch rules flaws yourself without having to worry about how that patch may interact with future releases is one of the big bonuses of playing a previous edition.

And I would agree that inserting 4th edition's wound allocation into 5th edition is the way to go.

This is, I think, the reason we never managed to get to play an old edition.

Everybody can generally agree, even it's proponents, that something needs to be fixed, but we can't ever nail down how. And sometimes, there's pretty serious debates about "what" as well.

I started in 2nd edition as well and while I have a strong sense of nostalgia for 2nd edition and even 5th edition, the game has in deed changed a lot from its former self.

The evolution of the game has largely been good. A lot has improved and been made better. The thing is, GW is willing to completely toss out mechanics and try new things This is good in its own way, but can make the game act and feel entirely different. Each edition has had things that were liked and disliked and this is likely to always be the case.

Personally, I think it's good for the overall health of the game to change things up and that this is why 40K holds onto a lot of its fans for years, decades even, and continues to grow; Warhammer doesn't get stale.

Tangent... 9th edition is the exception. It's already stale because the mission design is complete garbage. A new mission pack is already needed. Thankfully, this is really easy to do.

Perhaps its just the current state of 9th edition and its gak mission design, but going back to a previous edition provides that much needed mix to keep things from getting stale.

So is it the same boat? No. I think a better question to ask is; Should it be the same boat? I believe the answer is also a resounding 'No'.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The difficulty with trying to rewind is that you still need people to play with. I suspect that most of the people complaining endlessly on Dakka are people who dislike 9e but whose playgroup is happy with it and can't convince anyone to play anything else. The fixation on "GW needs to fix the current official rules" probably springs from dealing mostly with people who insist on playing only the current official rules.

It's like sex. You don't need a thousand notches on your bed post. One like minded partner and you are set. You can only play one person at a time after all. Bigger groups have advantages, do do smaller groups.

Thing with the argument about folks' playgroups is playgroups are generally 'active' players and typically tuned into the current 'game'. Thing is, they don't represent the hobby as a whole. There's plenty folks that are 'not active' or 'taking a break' and plenty 'former players' too. And they're, in my experience at least, more willing to do older editions. You are likely not the only horse in town that wants to do what you want to do. Find other people, put less EXP into list building and more into social networking. It won't be immediate but you will find them.

insaniak

To your original post, there apparently are loads of people who want 40K to be something other than where GW is taking the game. it seems to be broken down between the skirmish 2nd ed players, and the army battle game at it's general best with 5th edition players. i am in the second group

Mezmorki's prohammer has a few homebrew rules in it, our group just used the rules that already existed in the game in 3rd -7th editions and just put all the best stuff into 5th edition(and converting new units from 6th/7th into 5th is very easy to do)

I have a thread on this very topic that i regularly update

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789567.page

The funny thing is that while GW purposely never makes a perfect edition, the players all seem to reach a very similar rules set with all the best parts to make the game the best it can be.

I'm more an RPG guy and I feel you, after years of sulking DnD, I'm just getting back to 3.5 in Epic6.

But regarding 40k, you don't even have to be an old'timer to try and go back. I am familliar with GW universes for a very long time, but I really started playing 40k for real in 8th so I don't think you could talk about rose tinted glasses about me. I finally realized the game did not provide what I was looking for.

Lucky for my, my bud is some kind of an "archivist" and posess pretty much every edition.

So we played 2nd and it was really fun, more than most my 8th games, but it really felt a bit clunky and antiquated to me. I'm hoping to try out 3rd and/or 5th soon.

But right now, we are full in WFB 6th, replaying the Dark Shadows campaign and having a litteral blast !

No need to rewind for me as I've been playing 3rd Ed. 40K and 6th Ed. WFB since abount 2013-2014, I think.

Seeing all the people here who would play 6th makes me wish you all lived close enough to facilitate a few games...

I got here when 6th edition started. Sell me on why 2nd edition was better please? (Genuine interest)

Well, define better?

2nd edition was a skirmish game. A 1000-point Marine force might be a couple of squads, a vehicle and a couple of characters.

The rules are still recognisably a skirmish game. Rules like overwatch, rules for broken squads, or target selection, actually work well. Most weapons fire a single shot.

More detail. Auto-weapons can sustain fire and risk jamming. You can fire all your Cyclone missiles in one salvo: you'll either wreck the enemy unit, or vanish in an explosion yourself. Vehicles have individual damage charts. Penetrate armour and maybe the vehicle crashes, maybe it flips and lands on the shooter, maybe it explodes. Different power weapons have different effects.

Wargear cards allow you to customise characters and vehicles. There's a table for medpack use, another for engineers repairing vehicle damage. More detail was built up in the codices.

Conversely, less detail. There's a page of ranged weapons and a page of melee weapons. Orks use the same bolter as Marines. It's a much smaller game than later editions. Fan codexes often make the mistake of adding tons of new weapons.

There's a flexibility about army slots. You have HQ, troops and support (vehicles, field guns). A certain percentage of points MUST be spent on troops; HQ and support have limits (usually 1/4 of your army for each type). The Chaos codex still has beastmen, minotaurs and Chaos Warriors.

The game is random, swingy and lethal. The Dark Millennium supplement and its endless psychic phase makes it even worse. In the expansion, not taking a psyker or two when the enemy has them is a bad idea. The game is not polished, not really balanced, and you should probably cut up any cards with the words "virus" or "vortex" on them.

It's FUN and MEMORABLE - and that's the point. Coming back to it over 20 years later, you will need to discuss psykers with your opponent, you will need to talk about the stupid, overpowered stuff. But for that cost, you have a game to tinker with and dead power creep. The statline is still recognisably 40k if you want Necrons, Tau or Admech.

+1 to Momotaro's response

I sat down to write something and Momotaro's post was better than what I was going to say. I'll just add a few things:

As a smaller scale game, the rules were more "detailed" ... although much of the rules were also pretty intuitive and logical. So it played smoothly and there weren't many overly "gamey" things that broke your sense of immersion.

The entire game was more chaotic and volatile though. Lots of units had unique "catastrophic failure/success" charts that you rolled on (Ork Shock Attack Guns anyone?) that often meant your own stuff was as likely to backfire and blow you up as it was to blow up your enemy. At the same time, the game didn't take itself too seriously as a deeply competitive game. So players were willing to just go with it and let the wacky narrative and twists of faith take them on wild ride.

2nd isn't "better" per se - it's just different and depends on what you want to get our of your game.

I have already brought this up but I am not sure my playgroup wants to regress. Finding players is a challenge.

That said, I'd happily go back to 4th or 5th!!!!

A couple of friends and I are going back to 5th ed.
That's where they came into the game, and it's where I last had fun with it, and I ran a few tourneys in my area in 5th edition, too.

I played eldar in 2nd ed. Nobody liked eldar in 2nd ed.

I don't think I could go back to 2nd edition any more than I could start playing 9th, having quit playing in the summer of 2019. I mean, I have the models, but I held off playing for most of 2nd because of how janky it was, and I think I'm all Warhammered out. Plus spending the time exploring board games, making my own game, and assembling/painting my backlog is much more personally satisfying.

With you on that, Mezmorki!

Unit, "regress"? There's a ton of old games that work just fine.

Nurglitch, janky? Sure is! You do your thing and enjoy it.

I read a lot of posts about how "fun" 2nd edition can be, but maybe my glasses are not as rosy. I started 40k early in 2nd edition (just before the first codexes and Dark Millenium were released), and at that time I thought it was reasonably manageable. But once you got all of the characters, additional wargear cards, vehicle datafaxes, and psyker phase cards from Dark Millenium and the codexes, it really got a bit out of hand. The psychic phase could really bog the game down, let alone the close combat phase which also could eat up a lot of time. A 2000 point game could take an entire afternoon. This was definitely a "hero hammer" type of game, and really needed some friendly house rules to prevent competitive types from ruining it.

If I wanted to go back to 2nd edition, I'd stick with just the "Codex Army Lists" black book that came with the original box game and the basic psychic rules in the main rulebook. Otherwise, 4th/5th edition for me please with a few tweaks to the rules. 4th edition with a few minor revisions to its rules is the peak of 40k in my opinion.

 Gnarlly wrote:
4th edition with a few minor revisions to its rules is the peak of 40k in my opinion.

Completely agreed. 4th edition 40k had some major flaws that need revisions (the Terrain needs more options for levels than just 3, consolidating from combat-to-combat needs to be reigned in somehow, skimmer-auto-glance combined with Holofields, stuff like that).

I have similar feelings, the game isn't exactly what I remember getting hyped about back in the day. Also have fonrd memories of 2nd edition..

My solution is preferring Kill Team. It retains the skirmish feel, but is still current so finding a game isnt such a needle in the haystack.

I more or less play 9th just to have an excuse for collecting an army

Unit1126PLL wrote:I have already brought this up but I am not sure my playgroup wants to regress. Finding players is a challenge.

That said, I'd happily go back to 4th or 5th!!!!

Like anything else you have to make the effort to build the community.

Granted given the covid lockdowns the player base is weak right now, however i am fortunate enough to have a core player group that has been in the game since 3rd that all agree 5th edition was the best the game has ever been-even with its flaws. also i have been able to interest newer players who had never known anything prior to 8th ed. they look at the rules from those prior editions and go-"this was great why did they take it away?" or "this makes more sense" or more importantly they enjoy the thematic lore based rules like blood frenzy for khorne berserkers(we allow all codexes that are compatible IE 3rd-7th edition. the core rules/USRs of 5th over-ride any old or new rules from those other edition aside from the better rules we house ruled in like allowing snap fire from 7th into 5th).

In a sense we tried to make 5th the "perfect edition" much like The previously mentioned PROHAMMER project.

chromedog wrote:A couple of friends and I are going back to 5th ed.
That's where they came into the game, and it's where I last had fun with it, and I ran a few tourneys in my area in 5th edition, too.

I played eldar in 2nd ed. Nobody liked eldar in 2nd ed.

Lets be honest NOBODY liked eldar, except the eldar players in 3rd-5th.
A buddy of mine had an eldar corsair army in 5th, one of the toughest armies i ever had to fight...still managed to beat it from time to time

Insectum7 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Also worth pointing out that for those who don't find the current 40K rules to their taste, there are a lot of other rulesets out there these days, for which models can be converted. I worked up a bare-bones Space Marine army list for Maelstrom's Edge (for which you can download the core rules for free) a few years back, and I'm currently revising that to add in a bunch of extra stuff. But there are also various 'use whatever miniatures you have' rulesets out there now, many of them free.

While it's often the road of least resistance, you don't actually have to stick with a game if you don't enjoy it anymore.

But Can You Get A Game?

That's usually the crux of it. Like, I can play 2nd ed with one person I know. When the shops were open I could usually stroll in on 40K night and get a pick up game with a stranger. That's a biiig, friggin, deal.

And it's not like I won't enjoy the game either. I just don't like what GW is doing to the universe/lore/design-ecosystem.

AnomanderRake wrote:The difficulty with trying to rewind is that you still need people to play with. I suspect that most of the people complaining endlessly on Dakka are people who dislike 9e but whose playgroup is happy with it and can't convince anyone to play anything else. The fixation on "GW needs to fix the current official rules" probably springs from dealing mostly with people who insist on playing only the current official rules.

You might get lucky with a gaming group and find a decent number of people are interested in joining you in revisting older editions, but there are also the options of reaching out online or convincing a friend.

It's interesting to think about DnD when talking about this, a lot of people play older editions of DnD quite happily or take things they like from older editions and put them into the current one, obviously there are differences between DnD and 40k but one thing that DnD players seem to grasp is that new editions don't make the old editions disappear, they're as valid as they ever were. People are generally up for trying something new (or rather, old, but fresh to them) and you may have better luck convincing a group to try out some select elements from older editions for a session rather than convincing them to dump the current edition entirely.

FWIW, I started messing around with Tabletop Simulator - pretty awesome stuff for WH40K. It's possible that the virtual realm might provide more opportunity for finding opponents.

Deadnight wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The difficulty with trying to rewind is that you still need people to play with. I suspect that most of the people complaining endlessly on Dakka are people who dislike 9e but whose playgroup is happy with it and can't convince anyone to play anything else. The fixation on "GW needs to fix the current official rules" probably springs from dealing mostly with people who insist on playing only the current official rules.

It's like sex. You don't need a thousand notches on your bed post. One like minded partner and you are set. You can only play one person at a time after all. Bigger groups have advantages, do do smaller groups.

Thing with the argument about folks' playgroups is playgroups are generally 'active' players and typically tuned into the current 'game'. Thing is, they don't represent the hobby as a whole. There's plenty folks that are 'not active' or 'taking a break' and plenty 'former players' too. And they're, in my experience at least, more willing to do older editions. You are likely not the only horse in town that wants to do what you want to do. Find other people, put less EXP into list building and more into social networking. It won't be immediate but you will find them.

So active players are tuned to the current game, but don't represent the hobby.... Hows that work?
And in-active/former players are more likely to play previous editions - but once they start doing that, don't they become active?

Who exactly represents this hobby?

ccs wrote:
Who exactly represents this hobby?

Whoever is buying the most stuff.

 chromedog wrote:

I played eldar in 2nd ed. Nobody liked eldar in 2nd ed.

I liked the variety of options that Eldar had in 2nd edition. Removing the various things they had that allowed them to hide out of sight, pop out and shoot you and then disappear straight back out of sight again would probably go someway to making them more palatable to opponents.

 insaniak wrote:

 chromedog wrote:

I played eldar in 2nd ed. Nobody liked eldar in 2nd ed.

I liked the variety of options that Eldar had in 2nd edition. Removing the various things they had that allowed them to hide out of sight, pop out and shoot you and then disappear straight back out of sight again would probably go someway to making them more palatable to opponents.

That was just a Skimmer rule, Land Speeders could do that too.

I would love to go back and play 5E at some point, I'd even consider some 3E or 4E with my CSMs.

What I'd really love to play is 5E with 4E's wound allocation and vehicle secondary weapons rules, and maybe a couple other tweaks, maybe I'll set that up for some solo home gaming.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 chromedog wrote:

I played eldar in 2nd ed. Nobody liked eldar in 2nd ed.

I liked the variety of options that Eldar had in 2nd edition. Removing the various things they had that allowed them to hide out of sight, pop out and shoot you and then disappear straight back out of sight again would probably go someway to making them more palatable to opponents.

That was just a Skimmer rule, Land Speeders could do that too.

It wasn't just the skimmer pop ups, although Eldar having wider access to skimmers and jetbikes than everyone else amplified it. Warp Spiders could also jump out, shoot you and then jump back into cover, and while Swooping Hawks couldn't do multiple-move-in-one-turn shenanigans, being able to jump out of close combat without penalty and fly off the table until the Eldar player was ready to bring them back wherever they wanted to go hit a similar level or irritation.

A LOT of nostalgia drives the attraction to 2nd but even the slightest scrutiny shows how awful that edition truly was. It was so great that when given the opportunity came to either fine tune it or replace it wholesale GW chose the latter.

 Just Tony wrote:
A LOT of nostalgia drives the attraction to 2nd but even the slightest scrutiny shows how awful that edition truly was. It was so great that when given the opportunity came to either fine tune it or replace it wholesale GW chose the latter.

I've played it recently and it's great. You just have to decide with your opponent on how dirty you want to play.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 chromedog wrote:

I played eldar in 2nd ed. Nobody liked eldar in 2nd ed.

I liked the variety of options that Eldar had in 2nd edition. Removing the various things they had that allowed them to hide out of sight, pop out and shoot you and then disappear straight back out of sight again would probably go someway to making them more palatable to opponents.

That was just a Skimmer rule, Land Speeders could do that too.

It wasn't just the skimmer pop ups, although Eldar having wider access to skimmers and jetbikes than everyone else amplified it. Warp Spiders could also jump out, shoot you and then jump back into cover, and while Swooping Hawks couldn't do multiple-move-in-one-turn shenanigans, being able to jump out of close combat without penalty and fly off the table until the Eldar player was ready to bring them back wherever they wanted to go hit a similar level or irritation.

Ahh yeah, true. Well, I think my answer to some of that was Whirlwinds, teleporting Librarians, and lots of Overwatch.

 Just Tony wrote:
A LOT of nostalgia drives the attraction to 2nd but even the slightest scrutiny shows how awful that edition truly was. It was so great that when given the opportunity came to either fine tune it or replace it wholesale GW chose the latter.

Except they didn't 'replace it wholesale'. They replaced parts of it, like the rather clunky assault phase, but for the most part 3rd edition was just 2nd edition with a whole bunch of detail stripped out to speed up gameplay, because both players and GW wanted the game to cater to larger battles. 2nd edition worked just fine for smaller skirmishes, which is what it was designed for, but got clunky very quickly as games got bigger.

^"wholesale" is more correct than not, imo. The 2nd to 3rd transition is still the biggest edition shift in the history of the game.

It was the same size as 7th to 8th.

Both required a complete reset of the Codices and required a "black book" with get-you-buy unit rules until their respective Codices came out.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I would love to go back and play 5E at some point, I'd even consider some 3E or 4E with my CSMs.

What I'd really love to play is 5E with 4E's wound allocation and vehicle secondary weapons rules, and maybe a couple other tweaks, maybe I'll set that up for some solo home gaming.

Give ProHammer a look (sorry to all for my eternal evangelizing).

The wound allocation is more similar to 4th edition but is also a bit more robust and consistent in how it resolves shooting with mixed weapons against models with mixed armor/cover saves. Builds in forgiveness for the defender to allocate casualties as they want, but avoids the cheese of 5th editions system that let you spread wounds around on multi-wound models.

Refined the vehicle shooting and movement rules, also a bit of a hybrid between 4th and 6th. Vehicles have more flexibility to move quickly and have some chance of shooting, but getting too exposed is also really risky.

If I were to go back it would likely be to 6th with some tweaks. That's the edition most of us around here feel was the best. Also when we were gaming 3-4 days a week in spite of work and family.

5th would take more overhaul not just to cote ruled but also to codices. 3rd and 4th I wouldn't want to revisit and I never played 2nd.

7th I also enjoyed quite a bit but that's when the stupidity really started getting out of hand.

Anyway lack of FAQ would be a potential reoccurring issue.

dominuschao wrote:

Anyway lack of FAQ would be a potential reoccurring issue.

If you're playing with a more or less static group of people, it doesn't have to be an issue. Just start your own. That's what we used to do... any issues that come up during the game, if they can't be resolved immediately with a quick discussion on how to handle it (and the vast majority could), then we would roll off on it to keep the game going, and then in between games would discuss as a group how to handle that situation in the future. Start an FAQ document to track these decisions, if that seems necessary, although the group I mostly gamed with back in the day never found that to be necessary.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It was the same size as 7th to 8th.

Both required a complete reset of the Codices and required a "black book" with get-you-buy unit rules until their respective Codices came out.

While they both needed a codex reset, the strctural changes from 2nd to 3rd were more drastic.

Insectum7 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
A LOT of nostalgia drives the attraction to 2nd but even the slightest scrutiny shows how awful that edition truly was. It was so great that when given the opportunity came to either fine tune it or replace it wholesale GW chose the latter.

I've played it recently and it's great. You just have to decide with your opponent on how dirty you want to play.

Which is the same issue you have with modern 40K or with AOS. I shouldn't have to write a 50 Shades Of Grey style contract before every game. That's part of the reason I stuck with 3rd, there isn't really much need for any pruning or safe words.

insaniak wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
A LOT of nostalgia drives the attraction to 2nd but even the slightest scrutiny shows how awful that edition truly was. It was so great that when given the opportunity came to either fine tune it or replace it wholesale GW chose the latter.

Except they didn't 'replace it wholesale'. They replaced parts of it, like the rather clunky assault phase, but for the most part 3rd edition was just 2nd edition with a whole bunch of detail stripped out to speed up gameplay, because both players and GW wanted the game to cater to larger battles. 2nd edition worked just fine for smaller skirmishes, which is what it was designed for, but got clunky very quickly as games got bigger.

Ermm, actually...

Insectum7 wrote:^"wholesale" is more correct than not, imo. The 2nd to 3rd transition is still the biggest edition shift in the history of the game.

… this. 2nd Ed. was essentially a tabletop RPG trying to be a tabletop wargame. Inquisitor is a better successor to 2nd than any edition of 40K since. Almost all of the problems in modern 40K and the last few rulesets have come from trying to cram 2nd back into a system that wasn't meant to house it. Well, except for 9th, which is essentially trying to cram 2nd Ed. into AOS.

ccs wrote:

Who exactly represents this hobby?

No one. There is no hive mind, or even consensus.
Most people tend to believe that what their local group does (or in absence of a local group, what they do themselves) represents some wider group, but its nonsense.
Some folks like to point at tournament players because they can come up with a list of house rules required to play in their rented space. But 99.9% of players don't do that (the space is too small for more than a couple hundred), so it isn't broadly applicable to the experience of most.

Play, have fun. Don't worry about some arbitrary standard that doesn't exist.

2nd ed wasn't even remotely an RPG. That was Rogue Trader... and I'd say the shift from RT to 2nd was considerably more significant than that from 2nd to 3rd.

Although that opinion may be skewed by the fact that I never played RT. It possibly just looks more confusing from the outside.

2nd Ed wasn't trying to be an RPG. As said above, that was RT.

2nd Ed was a small skirmish game trying to be a wargame. That's why 2nd Ed wasn't a great game, but the Necromunda, which used the 2nd Ed rules, was frickin' fantastic.

Insectum7 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 chromedog wrote:

I played eldar in 2nd ed. Nobody liked eldar in 2nd ed.

I liked the variety of options that Eldar had in 2nd edition. Removing the various things they had that allowed them to hide out of sight, pop out and shoot you and then disappear straight back out of sight again would probably go someway to making them more palatable to opponents.

That was just a Skimmer rule, Land Speeders could do that too.

I think you may be confusing the only glance rule in 4th ed for skimmers VS eldar wargear specifically the crystal targeting matrix that allowed eldar tanks to shoot midway in the movement phase so they could move out from behind blocking LOS cover and then back again in the movement phase and could only ever be targeted by indirect fire.

Vaktathi wrote:I would love to go back and play 5E at some point, I'd even consider some 3E or 4E with my CSMs.

What I'd really love to play is 5E with 4E's wound allocation and vehicle secondary weapons rules, and maybe a couple other tweaks, maybe I'll set that up for some solo home gaming.

Our rules for our group did exactly that defensive weapons of S5 or less can fire normally at combat speed in addition to one weapon of S6 or higher as per 4th ed rules, we added in the snapfire rules so that even moving faster you could still at least contribute something to the game, but at degraded BS needing 6+ to hit.

dominuschao wrote:If I were to go back it would likely be to 6th with some tweaks. That's the edition most of us around here feel was the best. Also when we were gaming 3-4 days a week in spite of dork and family.

5th would take more overhaul not just to cote ruled but also to codices. 3rd and 4th I wouldn't want to revisit and I never played 2nd.

7th I also enjoyed quite a bit but that's when the stupidity really started getting out of hand.

Anyway lack of FAQ would be a potential reoccurring issue.

WOW, dumbfounded, 6th edition is by far considered the worst edition in that incarnation of the game, so much so even GW killed it after only 14 months. i literally killed 40K gaming at our FLGS.

There is actually very little overhaul needed using 5th ed core rules. In fact we allow players to use whichever codex they feel best represents their army and it works just fine. i use 3rd for demon hunters or witch hunters(sisters), our chaos player uses the 3.5 chaos dex. my admech uses the 7th ed codex. our guard players use the 5th ed codex etc... they all work fine if you follow the basic understanding that 5th ed USRs take precedent as do certain basic army builds-IE 5th introduced standard kit-all marines have grenades(not special gear like melta bombs) at no extra cost (in previous editions they had to pay points for them) this is applied across the board for all armies retroactively and forward. tau auto get photon grenades at no cost, 3.5 chaos marines the same for krak and frags etc...

7th edition only got really silly because of formations and the removal of the standard FOC, we don't allow the first and enforce the latter.

The end result is that we have incredibly fun games that feel like they are in the 40K universe because of the lore based rules built into those prior editions. .

 aphyon wrote:

Insectum7 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 chromedog wrote:

I played eldar in 2nd ed. Nobody liked eldar in 2nd ed.

I liked the variety of options that Eldar had in 2nd edition. Removing the various things they had that allowed them to hide out of sight, pop out and shoot you and then disappear straight back out of sight again would probably go someway to making them more palatable to opponents.

That was just a Skimmer rule, Land Speeders could do that too.

I think you may be confusing the only glance rule in 4th ed for skimmers VS eldar wargear specifically the crystal targeting matrix that allowed eldar tanks to shoot midway in the movement phase so they could move out from behind blocking LOS cover and then back again in the movement phase and could only ever be targeted by indirect fire.

No this is 2nd edition where stationary skimmer vehicles had a specific "pop-up-attack" where they could pop up from behind a piece of terrain, looking and shooting over it, for just their spot in the shooting phase.

insaniak wrote:

dominuschao wrote:

Anyway lack of FAQ would be a potential reoccurring issue.

If you're playing with a more or less static group of people, it doesn't have to be an issue. Just start your own. That's what we used to do... any issues that come up during the game, if they can't be resolved immediately with a quick discussion on how to handle it (and the vast majority could), then we would roll off on it to keep the game going, and then in between games would discuss as a group how to handle that situation in the future. Start an FAQ document to track these decisions, if that seems necessary, although the group I mostly gamed with back in the day never found that to be necessary.

Anymore thats what we are. And we have done this in the past, even with WHF. It works ok.

aphyon wrote:
WOW, dumbfounded, 6th edition is by far considered the worst edition in that incarnation of the game, so much so even GW killed it after only 14 months. i literally killed 40K gaming at our FLGS.

There is actually very little overhaul needed using 5th ed core rules. In fact we allow players to use whichever codex they feel best represents their army and it works just fine. i use 3rd for demon hunters or witch hunters(sisters), our chaos player uses the 3.5 chaos dex. my admech uses the 7th ed codex. our guard players use the 5th ed codex etc... they all work fine if you follow the basic understanding that 5th ed USRs take precedent as do certain basic army builds-IE 5th introduced standard kit-all marines have grenades(not special gear like melta bombs) at no extra cost (in previous editions they had to pay points for them) this is applied across the board for all armies retroactively and forward. tau auto get photon grenades at no cost, 3.5 chaos marines the same for krak and frags etc...

7th edition only got really silly because of formations and the removal of the standard FOC, we don't allow the first and enforce the latter.

The end result is that we have incredibly fun games that feel like they are in the 40K universe because of the lore based rules built into those prior editions. .

Anyway you guys here are more in tune with the former editions than I am, I could just be misremembering 5th and 6th. What I recall of 5th was some codices being light years behind like dark angels. While some like nids were a complete nightmare. Although it all kinda blurs now.
And then vehicles having some balance issues with the damage table or assaults when they moved. Oh and stun locking being a thing. If this I am remembering the correct edition I used to bring loads of missiles and pretty much aim to stun each vehicle then move on to the next. Anyway 5th was really cool too. Even 7th was fun but I found myself playing unfun things like beast stars and draigo shenstars etc.

What I recall of 5th was some codices being light years behind like dark angels. While some like nids were a complete nightmare. Although it all kinda blurs now.
And then vehicles having some balance issues with the damage table or assaults when they moved. Oh and stun locking being a thing. If this I am remembering the correct edition I used to bring loads of missiles and pretty much aim to stun each vehicle then move on to the next

those things were easily fixed
1.we allow you to use any codex you want from 3rd-7th so pick the one you think best represents your army.
IE for me dark angels will always be the 3rd ed mini dex and nids will always be 4th ed

2.Vehicle damage tables were fine in 5th, but the movement VS being hit in CC table was much better in 4th so we use that as well. shaken/stun locked was easily fixed as well by bringing in snap fire from 7th ed into 5th.

Interesting to see so many pointing to 5th edition as the go to edition for oldhammer. It was my favorite too. However, I went back to it once a few years ago and found it wasn't as cool as I had remembered. My opponent had the same reaction and our oldhammer effort died right then and there.

ccs wrote:

So active players are tuned to the current game, but don't represent the hobby.... Hows that work?

Selective quoting.

Active players don't represent the hobby as a whole.

If you want the full quote; in my experience, playgroups are generally 'active' players and typically tuned into the current 'game'. Thing is, they don't represent the hobby as a whole.

I don't see what makes this controversial, or worthy of being picked out and picked apart.

Lots of people play lots of variations of the game and/or involve themselves in some, or many and varied aspects of the hobby for lots of different reasons. Lots of people also either don't play anymore, don't play very often or used to play, or aren't interested in how the game is now, but still involve themselves in the hobby, or else at the very least, keep an eye on it.

In my experience active players (you know, people more heavily involved in clubs, flgs's tournaments and generally players outside of the 'basement scene') tend to be tuned in to the current edition more so than home brews or former editions. This is not a critical or a negative statement by the way.

Stands to reason to me that folks who would be willing to play earlier editions would more likely be drawn from those not actively involved in and embracing the current edition.

There's a bigger pool of fish out there than the 'active' scene.

ccs wrote:

And in-active/former players are more likely to play previous editions - but once they start doing that, don't they become active?

Nice word play. But it also completely misses the point.

ccs wrote:

Who exactly represents this hobby?

Everyone involved. It's a pretty broad church.

 Arschbombe wrote:
Interesting to see so many pointing to 5th edition as the go to edition for oldhammer. It was my favorite too. However, I went back to it once a few years ago and found it wasn't as cool as I had remembered. My opponent had the same reaction and our oldhammer effort died right then and there.

5E has its own set of sins to answer for, it's just a smaller list than the other editions. It's probably the most functional core ruleset for the widest array of factions, and the one I'd probably pick if I had to, but it was by no means perfect and the codex meta wasn't particularly well balanced either.

 aphyon wrote:

1.we allow you to use any codex you want from 3rd-7th so pick the one you think best represents your army.

I finished updating a compatibility section of rules in ProHammer to support 6th/7th edition codexes. It essentially means:

(1) No psychic phase - stuff happens at the start of shooting phase if not otherwise specified. No warp charge games, master level can be ignored. I did add in a simplified Deny the Witch rule into the core rules but it only works if a psyker is present. Can choose one psychic power per mastery level (no rolling for it)

(2) Adjusted rules for flyers to be more in line with the capabilities of non-flyer vehicles in ProHammer

(3) No formations. Must use standard FoC in a single detachment.

(4) No warlord traits

(5) No Look Out sir (not needed), No challenges (clunky as hell), no precision strike (not needed with ProHammer wound allocation)

(7) No Hull Points (not needed with ProHammer vehicle damage table chaneges)

(8) No D-Strength Weapon rolls - changed to deal D3 damage on automatic wound (saves allowed), and automatically penetrates (roll damage table)

(9) Added rules for Chariots (few minot adjustments for consistency)

(10) Adjusted universal special rules in various minor ways. Removed Hammer of Wrath ability (which was freaking everywhere and not really in line with how assaults work in ProHammer)

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:
Interesting to see so many pointing to 5th edition as the go to edition for oldhammer. It was my favorite too. However, I went back to it once a few years ago and found it wasn't as cool as I had remembered. My opponent had the same reaction and our oldhammer effort died right then and there.

5E has its own set of sins to answer for, it's just a smaller list than the other editions. It's probably the most functional core ruleset for the widest array of factions, and the one I'd probably pick if I had to, but it was by no means perfect and the codex meta wasn't particularly well balanced either.

Generally speaking, great editions are often less about the rules and more about the culture surrounding them or the place in our lives we were in when they happened. No matter how bad, every Magic set has fans who first experienced the game with those cards. Over time, the basics of the game given way to the details as we invest further and the more we focus on the details the more we find problems and the more the game becomes about wanting those problems to change. Some rulesets are still better than others, but often time the issues aren't really with the game. It's that we don't have the same friends or those friends aren't as enthusiastic as they used to be. We might have a new job or kids or other responsibilities that distract from gaming and make it harder to enjoy. These days its often the attitude of the global community that can make the experience more sour than our nostalgia recalls.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that more often then not, change is good, but change also gives us a break to realize that we're not having fun anymore. What I've found in going back is that I find a lot of the same issues I have with newer rules simply because I've changed more than the game has.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:
Interesting to see so many pointing to 5th edition as the go to edition for oldhammer. It was my favorite too. However, I went back to it once a few years ago and found it wasn't as cool as I had remembered. My opponent had the same reaction and our oldhammer effort died right then and there.

5E has its own set of sins to answer for, it's just a smaller list than the other editions. It's probably the most functional core ruleset for the widest array of factions, and the one I'd probably pick if I had to, but it was by no means perfect and the codex meta wasn't particularly well balanced either.

Generally speaking, great editions are often less about the rules and more about the culture surrounding them or the place in our lives we were in when they happened. No matter how bad, every Magic set has fans who first experienced the game with those cards. Over time, the basics of the game given way to the details as we invest further and the more we focus on the details the more we find problems and the more the game becomes about wanting those problems to change. Some rulesets are still better than others, but often time the issues aren't really with the game. It's that we don't have the same friends or those friends aren't as enthusiastic as they used to be. We might have a new job or kids or other responsibilities that distract from gaming and make it harder to enjoy. These days its often the attitude of the global community that can make the experience more sour than our nostalgia recalls.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that more often then not, change is good, but change also gives us a break to realize that we're not having fun anymore. What I've found in going back is that I find a lot of the same issues I have with newer rules simply because I've changed more than the game has.

This is also true.

Part of what I remember fondly about 5th was the fact that my friend and I were growing our armies, so every new acquisition was a new weapon that would turn the tide and give us the upper hand [until they fielded something new of their own to counter it]. This will never return.
In addition, I was very fond of the tank battles between Hammerheads and Vanquishers that we often had and the game often came down to. This was before the days of Riptides and Wraithknights that were exploiting the monstrous creature rules while obviously being vehicles, and these were our most decisive assets. All the new units introduced since then won't just go away or people don't want for them to go away, which is another reason that turning back the clock doesn't catch on except as a novelty "this was the way that way, remember those days?" game.

6th edition was a major step down from 5th edition:
Hull points changed the way vehicles interacted with AT weapons and other units in general for the much-worse.
Lords of War were added to the game
Allies were added to the game
Flyers were added to the game with their snap-shots rule
And over time, monstrous creatures proliferated from being the Tyranids and that one Grey Knight thing [which is another "should have been a vehicle that's a little older than the Riptide] to being more common ultimate units that were somewhere between a true super heavy and whatever the biggest thing was before.

For the most part, none of these things would go away if we went back in time, and people will still want to use them, which in addition to the flaws of the edition [wound allocation I remember clearly being a problem] really kills any attempt to go back.

And then there's the disagreements about what exactly is a flaw and needs fixing. I consider the general case vehicle interaction with antitank weapons an upside, because I like tanks and guns and my aspiration for a 40k game is to look like a Flames of War game. I know at least one person who would rather play a skirmish scale game without heavy units beyond armored transports at all, and to him the general trend towards tankhammer of the time was a problem.

And of course, this brings in the issue with making a homebrew system to fix problems, which is that everybody really wants different things out of the game.

 Arschbombe wrote:
Interesting to see so many pointing to 5th edition as the go to edition for oldhammer. It was my favorite too. However, I went back to it once a few years ago and found it wasn't as cool as I had remembered. My opponent had the same reaction and our oldhammer effort died right then and there.

.

Like others have said it wasn't perfect. it needed some tweaks

Some great rules existed in other editions that should have been in the 5th edition core rules set.

From my topic on the subject these are the rules we put in from the other editions

1.rapid fire weapon rules (6th/7th)-being able to fire a single shot at full range even when moving
2.snap fire(6th/7th) for heavy weapons and vehicle weapons including when stunned/shaken(but not moving flat out)
3.new weapon profiles(grav etc..)(6th/7th)
4.overwatch(6th/7th)
5.objective secure-troops choice(6th/7th)
6.CCW AP value(6th/7th)
7.grenade throwing(6th/7th)
8.fearless-no LD checks(3rd)
9.3+ reserves(6th/7th)
10.no hull points-5th ed glance/pen chart only
11.flyer rules(5th/forge world flyer rules)-jump units can assault, -12" range penalty for guns, immobilize result= destroyed-this is a combination of 7th flyer rules and 3rd-5th forgeworld flyer rules.
12.All AA units can choose to fire skyfire or ground fire(5th) at the start of the shooting phase
13.4th edition vehicle assault rules-to-hit +armor facing= auto/4+/6+=not move/move up to 6"/move over 6"
14.6th edition smash for MCs(half attacks rounded up max S 10)
15. independent characters can fight separate in CC(counts as separate battle)-just the 5th edition rule-no look out sir etc...
16.D/macro weapons 5th=auto pen/wound, no cover or armor- invul only/ 1 damage against MCs/instant death non-MCs/ +1 on vehicle damage chart
17.vehicle squads act as talons, can break and act independent but not reform during game.(5th)
18.psyker powers used when in the proper phase(shooting attacks in shooting phase, melee in CC etc..) on LD check/selecting the known powers available at the start of the game as per 5th ed rules-includes all 7th edition disciplines.
-special note-there is no such thing as deny the witch in 5th unless you have a psychic hood or some other gear like null rods, runes of warding etc... you cannot stop these powers
19.snipers-strength 3 always hits on 2+/wounds on 4+/rending on 6+ (3rd/4th)
20.defensive weapons on vehicles-S5 or less do not count as heavy weapons if the vehicle moves at combat speed (and is not stunned/shaken)-4th

It does not require a comprehensive re-write like prohammer (although they are very similar in many ways) but these are the rules we find work very well to enhance 5th ed.

This game as an example was 3.5 khorne berserkers VS 5th ed salamanders with a 7th ed allied cult mechanicus force (allies did exist in 5th but they were very restricted) my scouts were out of frame doing battle with obliterators on the far right corner.

Deadnight wrote:

ccs wrote:

So active players are tuned to the current game, but don't represent the hobby.... Hows that work?

Selective quoting.

Active players don't represent the hobby as a whole.

If you want the full quote; in my experience, playgroups are generally 'active' players and typically tuned into the current 'game'. Thing is, they don't represent the hobby as a whole.

I don't see what makes this controversial, or worthy of being picked out and picked apart.

Lots of people play lots of variations of the game and/or involve themselves in some, or many and varied aspects of the hobby for lots of different reasons. Lots of people also either don't play anymore, don't play very often or used to play, or aren't interested in how the game is now, but still involve themselves in the hobby, or else at the very least, keep an eye on it.

In my experience active players (you know, people more heavily involved in clubs, flgs's tournaments and generally players outside of the 'basement scene') tend to be tuned in to the current edition more so than home brews or former editions. This is not a critical or a negative statement by the way.

Stands to reason to me that folks who would be willing to play earlier editions would more likely be drawn from those not actively involved in and embracing the current edition.

There's a bigger pool of fish out there than the 'active' scene.

ccs wrote:

And in-active/former players are more likely to play previous editions - but once they start doing that, don't they become active?

Nice word play. , But it also completely misses the point.

ccs wrote:

Who exactly represents this hobby?

Everyone involved. It's a pretty broad church.

I didn't miss your point, I was making fun of it.

 aphyon wrote:
It does not require a comprehensive re-write like prohammer (although they are very similar in many ways) but these are the rules we find work very well to enhance 5th ed.

I think there are four broad approaches to oldhammer re-writes.
1) Pick and choose rules - taking what worked from each edition
2) Pick and choose rewrite - re-writing the rules from each edition to try and fix the flaws
3) Simplehammer - trimming back to a more streamline 3rd-5th edition, no overwatch, flyers, squadrons, few rerolls, etc
4) Pointshammer - re-pointing an edition with few or no rules changes

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:
Interesting to see so many pointing to 5th edition as the go to edition for oldhammer. It was my favorite too. However, I went back to it once a few years ago and found it wasn't as cool as I had remembered. My opponent had the same reaction and our oldhammer effort died right then and there.

5E has its own set of sins to answer for, it's just a smaller list than the other editions. It's probably the most functional core ruleset for the widest array of factions, and the one I'd probably pick if I had to, but it was by no means perfect and the codex meta wasn't particularly well balanced either.

Ehhhhhhhh, gonna have to disagree there. 5th has core rules issues, almost every single issue with 3rd is a codex issue.

 aphyon wrote:


Like others have said it wasn't perfect. it needed some tweaks

I know. It was not a perfect edition by any stretch, but it's when I had the most fun in 40k. So it was a little jarring to find that it wasn't as fun as we remembered. You start to wonder, "why did we enjoy this back then?" We had been out of the GW hobby for a few years playing other things, primarily X-wing. I think the stark contrast between the quality of the FFG rules and the GW rules was a part of our dissatisfaction. We still enjoyed the models and lore, but felt the juice wasn't worth the squeeze for the gameplay especially since we had other games we could play. And yet, if 7th edition had never come out, we might have stayed in the 40k bubble and never picked up X-wing in the first place.

 aphyon wrote:

Like others have said [5th] wasn't perfect. it needed some tweaks

Some great rules existed in other editions that should have been in the 5th edition core rules set.

From my topic on the subject these are the rules we put in from the other editions

1. ...
2. ...
...
20. ...

Aphyon and I were remarking how much similarity his rules have vs ProHammer. He's been testing his more regularly, and ProHammer will need more tuning.

While there is a lot of overlap, there are some notable differences:

4. ProHammer overwatch is more of classic overwatch like in 2nd edition - not an automatic thing like in 6th+ (but there are restrictions)
10. Vehicle damage charts are a modified version of 4th - separate glancing and penetrating tables
11. Flyer rules are a straight adaption from 6th, but modified to be in line with other vehicle changes
18. Adds in a basic deny the witch rule, but ONLY if the affected enemy contains an opposing psyker. Pshychic hoods and what not extend the range of this effect.

"Cleanuphammer" is another option.
Looking at the areas where the rules sort of bloopered up, patching those, then finding ways to streamline and pare down the bloat.

I admit to a certain degree of 'maximalism', and am a strong proponent of kitbash, your dudes, etc. So things like 'universal-access' wargear cards, the 3.5 Chaos Codex, Lost and the Damned, etc. get my attention. Things like Warhammer Legends alongside GW only making rules (or removing rules) to line up exactly with that their box-sets contain=bleh. If I want mono-loadout units...that's what Warmachine/Hordes is for. So what I would end up doing is taking the superset of all the options from every edition from early 4th to late 7th and pare down.

Consolidating USRs is one start. First is 'formatting' of course. Things like "Zealot grants a unit Hatred and Fearless' should be deleted, and replaced with Hatred&Fearless, as IIRC there was only one Warlord Trait for Word Bearers that proc'd off a unit 'already having Zealot' (instead of Hatred and Fearless). Yes, that would mean that Monstrous Creatures would have Fear, Hammer of Wrath, Smash, Very Bulky, etc. printed on their unit cards. This is an intermediary step though.

The next part is consolidation. Having composite "meta-USRs" can help reduce bloat. For example, having a Grants Unit[X] USR would have it so that attaching a model to another unit would give that unit the benefit of X rule, without having the need for a * qualifier. Thus, rather than having a scenario like "A unit of White Scars has Hit&Run so long as it is entirely composed of models that innately have Hit&Run," you could have some units have Hit&Run, and some special leaders have Grants Unit[Hit&Run]. This would also allow Camo Cloaks to provide Stealth(+1 Cover Save) without a single Lord Commissar providing Stealth to a combined guard of 50 Guardsmen, rather than a Camo Cloak granting a +1 cover save that was not Stealth or Shrouded, and thus could not be countered by an Eldar Warlock casting Reveal!

Once the 'redundant' USRs are rolled up and the appropriate framework of meta-USRs provided, the rest is rolling up the grand list of 'bespoke rules' into USRs. I find it amusing that there was no USR for 'fire an extra weapon' in the BRB despite the numerous units with bespoke-named rules for this. Think of it:

More Dakka[X]: A model with More Dakka[X] can shoot with X additional weapons on its profile per phase it is allowed to shoot. A model with More Dakka[!] may shoot with ALL weapons on its profile.

Thus, "Multitrackers", "Decimation Protocols", "Heavy Battle Servitor", etc. could all be replaced with "More Dakka[1]," while most Monstrous Creatures would have it as a matter of course.

These changes have all been formatting-related thus far, and have not really dealt with the actual balance of the game. However, 7th had a LOT of balance issues and a lot of trap options (Khorne Daemonkin had the nickname Codex: Gorepack, not because the Gorepack was awesome, but because it was the only Formation that wasn't 100% rubbish. Tau had the Riptide Wing.). Ultimately, there were 'three' popular houserules to curb on the worst of 7th.

-ITC removed "Deathblow" from Destroyer Weapons, because turning 40k into a singular game of Russian Roulette was not fun. Alas, it did not do a similar change for Stomp or Thunderblitz IIRC (though Thunderblitz was less of an issue due to the relatively restricted threat range and weaker chart).
-ITC changed Invisibility from "Units can only snapshoot/melee on 6s vs an Invisible Unit" to "resolve attacks as WS/BS1", thus allowing AOEs to 'function' versus them.
-The third one varied from formats, but the Screamerstar became a notably deadly unit in tournament formats involving objectives/board control due to the "rerollable 2+ Invulnerable Save." The ruling varied from tournament to tournament (IIRC, Nova had it that an Invulnerable Reroll could only be on a 4+ at best), but the other implementation was that "An Invulnerable Save that does not start at 2++ cannot be improved to 2++ unless a power explicitly allows this." 3++ rerollable could be overcome with torrent of fire, while 2++ rerollable...yeah.

Ultimately, the 'arms race' between durability, cost, and firepower was such that 7th was a game where multishot midstrength options (for infantry-killing or stripping hullpoints) were the optimal choice, with a few D or other 'specialty' tools for dealing with defense skew, while many "Strength 8/9" weapons like Missile Launchers/Lascannons were left in an awkward middle-space with relatively little purpose: It was not like they could destroy vehicles more reliably than grav/Hi-Yield Missile Pods/Scatter Lasers. It was not like they could bring the weight of fire to overcome defensive techs. They could perhaps scare a Bike player into Jinking for a round or so...

8th tried to skirt this issue by replacing hullpoints with wounds, upping the overall wound counts, and making weapons have damage profiles. This has its ups and downs; on one hand, it streamlines things and gets rid of Instant Death. On the other hand, it leads to questions like whether Heavy Bolters are 'more consistent' than missile launchers at damaging Land Raiders...I am personally ok with either tweaking the 'old' vehicle facings, or switching to a toughness mechanic as needed, and removing "Instant Death" (or instant-explodes" with doing more damage instead. Ultimately, that's a 'resolution mechanic' rather than something for later editions.

This said, I would want to tweak 'how vehicles work' as the 8th/9th ed system where they 'charge' feels off. Yes, that means looking at Tank Shock and Ramming again. It was rather silly that a Warbuggy could 'stop' a Land Raider in its tracks, but a Rhino could instakill a Stormsurge and so this brings up whether or not units should have a "Size" rating rather than special rules like "Bulky/Very Bulky/MASSIVE". Frankly, this would probably be simplest to accomplish by adapting the Trample rules from Warmahordes, or 2nd ed Ramming to whichever resolution mechanic this 'retrohammer' mashup has, and making it so that sufficiently bulky things like Terminators or Bullgryns are harder to shift than things like Guardsmen or Gretchin; it wouldn't hurt to allow certain Monstrous Creatures the ability to attempt to "tankshock through roadblocks as well, such as Carnifexes attempting to break through a line of throwaway Conscripts.

(Insert more things about derandomizing Warlord Traits/Psychic Powers, 'opening up' wargear loadouts, etc. This is a long rant that can go on for ages).

Arschbombe wrote:

 aphyon wrote:


Like others have said it wasn't perfect. it needed some tweaks

I know. It was not a perfect edition by any stretch, but it's when I had the most fun in 40k. So it was a little jarring to find that it wasn't as fun as we remembered. You start to wonder, "why did we enjoy this back then?" We had been out of the GW hobby for a few years playing other things, primarily X-wing. I think the stark contrast between the quality of the FFG rules and the GW rules was a part of our dissatisfaction. We still enjoyed the models and lore, but felt the juice wasn't worth the squeeze for the gameplay especially since we had other games we could play. And yet, if 7th edition had never come out, we might have stayed in the 40k bubble and never picked up X-wing in the first place.

Aside from classic battletech and B5 wars up until around 6th edition 40K was my main game, at that point 40K killed itself, since it was so bad i started playing games other than 40K branching out into the at the time new infinity game. this led to building a smallish flames of war army(never really stuck with it), warmachine and forces for victory at sea, DUST and others. the ability to experience other systems is both enlightening and puts 40K into the context of a certain style of wargame that makes it unique to play in it's own way.

Mezmorki wrote:

 aphyon wrote:

Like others have said [5th] wasn't perfect. it needed some tweaks

Some great rules existed in other editions that should have been in the 5th edition core rules set.

From my topic on the subject these are the rules we put in from the other editions

1. ...
2. ...
...
20. ...

Aphyon and I were remarking how much similarity his rules have vs ProHammer. He's been testing his more regularly, and ProHammer will need more tuning.

While there is a lot of overlap, there are some notable differences:

4. ProHammer overwatch is more of classic overwatch like in 2nd edition - not an automatic thing like in 6th+ (but there are restrictions)
10. Vehicle damage charts are a modified version of 4th - separate glancing and penetrating tables
11. Flyer rules are a straight adaption from 6th, but modified to be in line with other vehicle changes
18. Adds in a basic deny the witch rule, but ONLY if the affected enemy contains an opposing psyker. psychic hoods and what not extend the range of this effect.

1.I don't want classic overwatch ala 2nd in the game as it goes against the streamlined play that was created via the 3rd ed changes to gameplay. if i want something like that better implemented i play DUST or infinty
2.the damage chart in 4th was the same as hull points in 6th to me as it made vehicles paper tigers(unless you were a skimmer) the rise in the options for AT work in units from 5th ed more than balanced out the more realistic resilience of the vehicle damage table in 5th.
3. i prefer the feel of the FW rules better, but their activation system where aircraft moved in during your opponents movement phase really broke the flow of the game. so combining the 2 seems to work better in my experience.
4 that's one point i am firm on. non psykers should have no ability to stop a psyker unless they are given something that can counter it rather it be the brass collar of khorne or some other mitigating factor like eldar runes of warding. it may be because of my history with playing DnD. a non wizard cannot just say ignore that fireball your wizard just cast at me because i want to. however if i have a magic item that grants me a shield that's another story.

The other nice thing about the rules we use is that they are not made up by us, they actually already existed in the game in print and are easy to reference as well as often already known by the players. but you are correct as i noted previous players tend to figure out how to fix the GW screw-ups often finding very similar intuitive solutions.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Hull points changed the way vehicles interacted with AT weapons and other units in general for the much-worse.

I only somewhat disagree. What made it be worse is how few Hull Points were assigned and how easy it was to remove them. If they gave out Hull Points like Monstrous Creatures had Wounds, it wouldn't have been so bad. If it required Penetrating Hits to remove Hull Points, it wouldn't have been so bad. The two combined made it a total crap show, though.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Lords of War were added to the game

More like were allowed to show up in smaller games without as much special arrangement. They already existed when people allowed Forge World rules or through Battle Missions.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Allies were added to the game

Allies already existed, but were just limited to the Imperium through the 'hunter codices. 6th Edition just allowed others to participate.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Flyers were added to the game with their snap-shots rule

Much like the Lords of War, Flyers were still around, just not generally available without special arrangement. I do believe the Snap Shot rules were new, but not a bad idea, overall.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
And over time, monstrous creatures proliferated from being the Tyranids and that one Grey Knight thing [which is another "should have been a vehicle that's a little older than the Riptide] to being more common ultimate units that were somewhere between a true super heavy and whatever the biggest thing was before.

And now you made Chaos and Eldar cry. They had Monstrous Creatures before the Grey Knights did.

And as silly as Tau's Monstrous Creatures are (and the Grey Knights' one has been mocked far more), they are a logical response to those big lugs if you have a battlesuit fetish.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
For the most part, none of these things would go away if we went back in time, and people will still want to use them, which in addition to the flaws of the edition [wound allocation I remember clearly being a problem] really kills any attempt to go back.

And then there's the disagreements about what exactly is a flaw and needs fixing. I consider the general case vehicle interaction with antitank weapons an upside, because I like tanks and guns and my aspiration for a 40k game is to look like a Flames of War game. I know at least one person who would rather play a skirmish scale game without heavy units beyond armored transports at all, and to him the general trend towards tankhammer of the time was a problem.

And of course, this brings in the issue with making a homebrew system to fix problems, which is that everybody really wants different things out of the game.

There is a lot of truth in that on so many fronts.