This is something that I've always been somewhat interested on hearing for some time. It happens that I was going through some of my older books, codices, imperil amour.. etc etc. I managed to go down a rather interesting rabbit hold of rules, abilities, and just a few other interesting tidbits that made those armies so fun back in the day.
The one that really got a laugh out of me, and to that point made me wonder just what GW was thinking at the time. Was the *infinite range* rule for some wargear/weapons.
Now this may not seem like much to some of you, but some of the older players like myself. May have memories of using this rule to play some rather funny shenanigans against the enemy. One of my favorites being the fact that most shops that ran organized play, would allow you to use this rule on another table's army. FULL STOP. In you could see another game going on at another table, then there was very little stopping you from launching your vortex missiles onto their board, and into their troop formations.
It may seem weird, or outlandish, but the premise also held true with GW shops as well. And if you so happened to call them up from several states away, they would most likely honor the rule.
The gloriously random Ork Madboyz rules from the RT era. I'm not normally a fan of rolling on random charts, but for Madboyz it just felt right.
A Madmob could, for example, suddenly develop a violent hatred of the colour purple and attack the nearest unit featuring that colour in their banners or uniforms. Or start copying the behaviour of a randomly chosen enemy unit, moving to mirror their moves, shooting when they shoot, and so on. They might even split up into two separate units due to irreconcilable philosophical disagreements.
Being able to shoot into close combat or shoot your own units.
Considering how callous or mindless many factions in 40K are, this should be far more common and not be a problem for most of them. I understand it was removed for balancing reasons but it was thematically appropriate.
I still remember in 2nd edition deliberately shooting a Termgant tarpit with a barbed strangler in close combat against Terminators, successfully tearing them apart with the blast for the price of just 1 Termagant (the blast was deadlier than the actual hit).
I like to reminisce about the 'Ere We Go/Freebooterz Orks rules, but they look like a nightmare to actually use; special rules for madboyz, for mekboyz (including a malfunction / repair card system that involved the other player), for the Shokk Attack Gun, for field artillery, for Weirdboys for Warbikes for crying out loud. Then the rules for creating bioniks and kustom weapons. All of those different subsystems, all working differently, all with charts (and in the case of Madboyz, rolling on a chart to see which chart to roll on, three levels deep!)
Something to remember fondly, but not something I'd ever want to use.
I like the Difficult Terrain rules for 3rd through 7th editions. It took advantage of the fact that everyone moved 6" and was more unpredictable than simply moving at half speed. You could adapt it to a version with different move values, as long as you restricted the allowed moves to 2", 3", 4", 5", 6", 8", 10", 12" or 20"; just use the appropriate kind of die.
Mine comes from Game Workshop being terrible rule writers:
When they choose the least rational way to measure movement from all the possible selections....
Oh The Laughing God took a part of me that day, and I never was the same since.
Long story, won't get into it here as I don't think people liked that thread much.
The one I miss most is provably old zogwart, the weirdboy special character. He had a power that let you turn an opponents character into a squig, and have a basic little statlime for it.
It was short range and ultimately unlikely to happen AND you didnt count as having actually killed them if they were the warlord, but god it was so great.
Ordinance weapons against transport vehicles being able to instantly kill all transported models on a pen with a result of 6 on the table (I once wiped out an entire rhino rush army in 1 turn with a series of lucky rolls lol)
Zzap guns used to auto hit
Hellhounds used to explode easier with the exposed fuel tanks
Initiative being a stat and speedy bois could actually fight first when charged by slower troops
Clone fields for archons
Calidus assassin being able to pop up inside an enemy squad
Avatar being immune to melta and flame weapons
Necron Phase out, and actually being interesting before they became tomb kings in space
(for a not so fond memory, great unclean one being T5 and getting insta gibbed by dreadnoughts in close combat and demolisher cannons)
Old greater demon possession having to possess a champion or squad leader and getting benefits while possessed
Khorne before the giant nerf bat to stripping their 3+ armor and mostly psychic immunity
Minor psychic powers
SoB immunity to minor psychic powers
Old wych weapons
Ork looted vehicles
Characters actually having wargear options...
Abadons/fabius biles / insesrt characters insta kill anyone on a hit
Mr. Burning wrote: Always played against them...Shokk Attack Gun.
Snotlings maybe teleported inside body parts at various points.
Yes! I was going to post this. It was a permanent fixture for my orks and firing it always felt like an event. Getting snots to materialise inside Terminator armour = winning.
Minor psychic powers for Chaos in the 3.5th ed.
Six powers. You could buy powers for 10 pts each.
Number 2 was ''Siren''. A model with this couldn't be shot or charged.
Took two Lieutenants on bikes, with 9 powers each.
In each game of the tourney I rolled Siren for each Biker.
Each Lieutenant had an icon to summon Daemons.
Played 5x6 Daemonettes and 6 Daemonettes on Steeds.
Daemons were able to charge after summoning.
Dominated all games and won. What a fun! My friend Eric wanted to kill me.
Crossfire, and I think it should be re-introduced. If you fall back in the direction of an enemy unit you get wiped out. In the current game it could be D3 mortal wounds to fall back in the direction of the enemy... Clue is in the name, falling back, you shouldn't be going towards the enemy, just your own lines really.
Blast weapons. It made proximity matter a lot more and it's a weapon design that's effectiveness often scales down as fewer models remain on the board. It punished blobbing and make target selection a lot more skillful instead of just looking at the mathammered optimal target. The scatter aspect was something that really made it hard to evaluate a weapons performance on paper as it was very dependent on the battlefield conditions. Often times using a killkannon to fire into the middle of the enemy formations would be incredibly effective as even "missing" would still be effective as it scattered to hit something else. It also required care as to not hit your own stuff once your units got in close.
It made the battlefield feel like it mattered a lot more instead of each unit being in its own isolated bubble. That said it wasn't perfect with some rather annoying situations (looking at you wyverns and thud guns) but for the most part it was a very immersive and compelling aspect of the game which the newer rule sets have never been able to come up with a decent substitute.
Seconding IG Platoons, something about having a FOC in my FOC so I can listbuild while building my list just felt great. Honorable mention for Al'Rahem, a special platoon leader who forced his entire platoon to outflank for maximum shenaniganery.
Also, I kind of miss old-school demo charges - a grenade with a 6" range and a Large Blast template, which meant that you'd regularly throw the charge at some juicy clump of infantry or vehicles...only to scatter back onto your squad.
Spoiler:
<Sergeant Bixton, pointing at a nearby Chaos Land Raider> "Weatherby! Use the demo charge or we're all dead!" <Weatherby, arming the charge and dropping it at his feet> "Charge deployed, sir!" <Fortuna, thoroughly amused> "I think you meant 'and', Sergeant."
The platoons rule was just there so that Imperial Guard could be fitted into the Battle Company structure of the Force Organisation chart. If 4th edition hadn't got rid of all the other interesting ones, then it would probably have made more sense to give each faction its own standard FOC (and perhaps have different categories - like splitting Eldar into HQ, Guardians, Ghosts, Aspect Warriors, etc).
With 8th and 9th being more flexible on the matter, it's just easier to field each platoon as its own detachment.
To an extent. You run out of Elite slots basically the moment you start listbuilding, and Emperor help you if you try to follow Rule of 3 above 1k points.
Put me in for IG Platoons. Mostly because I never got a chance to use them (sold a SW army after 5th, and got back in as IG in 8th).
After watching some HH batreps lately:
-Initiative, and specifically unwieldy weapons. Large risk of dying before hitting in exchange for a large potential reward of completely splatting something.
-Weaponskill; thematically, I like the idea of combat being affected by the skill level of each opponent. Higher skill won more than not, but there was still a chance of an underdog taking out the better foe.
-Morale: ish? I find it odd to lose models due to morale, and units running when they lose morale seems more accurate, but, at the same time, I imagine it's not fun as a player watching one of your units running off the board and not being able to do anything about it.
I can't exactly recall the name but it was like forced fall back during either 3rd or 4th. I had some Orks beat a unit of Space Marines really bad slaying all of them except the Captain that had been with them, Might have just been one Marine from that unit alive, can't recall exactly but they had to fall back after such a loss. and even though they would autto rally this could not happen because of my units that were still in range to prevent that, something like with in 6" or something. this forced them to fall back again on their turn. I kept putting units near enough to keep them in full retreat until they fled the table.
I did this again in 5th at an Ard' Boys qualifier. Death with vs loads of Orks. Due to some rules over sites Ghaz and some Nobs or something managed to drive right up full speed jump out and charge, this was actually against the rules I guess the other player was new. we couldn't find it, we'd actually gone past that rule. However Ghaz and co did nothing of consequence and were forced to fall back. And I followed as before. The other player though Ghaz could call the WAAAGH making them fearless but as they were falling back no such luck. and again escorted off the table over sever turns. I had maybe 30 model total maybe a few more. Crushed that game.
I may have been wrong about Ghaz but oh, well. He got his charge so I figure we're even. lol. I was sure though that a unit falling back could only take certain voluntary actions and calling the WAAAGH wasn't one of them.
I love chasing units down from combat as they fall back with ether as I mentioned or over running them. It's wasn't all that easy but weirdly rewarding.
In 3rd I had a DE army that forced a Chaos army to continue to fall back and I kept blocking their path quickly wiping them out in that manner.
|Only those three games stick out though.
Maybe not the best rule ever but still kinda fun.
For me when it comes to Eldar, it's the Warp Spiders old flicker jump effect, for when they get targeted for a shooting attack. They got to immediately make a 12" move, which I think was also in any direction so long as it took them away from the unit shooting at them.
For me when it comes to Eldar, it's the Warp Spiders old flicker jump effect, for when they get targeted for a shooting attack. They got to immediately make a 12" move, which I think was also in any direction so long as it took them away from the unit shooting at them.
How did that work? Was it able to make the shoting attack fail if they got out of range or out of LoS?
8e/9e feels very predictable/deterministic to me, we throw balls of math at each other and see whose ball of math comes out on top. I miss the positioning advantages you got from armour facings and the unpredictability scatter and reserves rolls added. There were exceptions (drop pods...) but Deep Strike was high risk/high reward instead of perfectly reliable invincible alpha strike.
I haven't been able to track the exact wording down online, and my old copy of Vraks is back in the UK, but maybe the rules I've loved most dearly were the ones for the R&H Ordinance Tyrant.
For those not in the know, the Ordinance Tyrant could call artillery strikes in on his own units, I think without having to roll for scatter? He was the only unit in the game who could target his own troops, and it was brilliantly merciless.
This meant that you could run absolute worthless chod infantry tarpits up the board, assault with them, and then call a barrage down on top of both your own men, and whoever they were fighting.
Monstrously cruel, hopelessly bleak, and opportunistically violent, for me, these rules were a perfect meshing of fluff and gameplay, and it made me absolutely determined to buy into the army. Was gutted when GW scrapped them, as I'd been planning to butcher a Creed mini, pop a respirator on his face, and replace his cigar hand with a withered-looking plaguebearer hand, and make him rain hate on foe and friend alike.
6th ed Tau Piranha Flechette Dischargers: every models in base contact takes 1 auto wound pre combat phase, saves applied normally; there was a 'gotcha' moment when my friend's 31x ork boyz charged my 5x piranhas, I recall 25 or so died, lol till this day!
posermcbogus wrote: I haven't been able to track the exact wording down online, and my old copy of Vraks is back in the UK, but maybe the rules I've loved most dearly were the ones for the R&H Ordinance Tyrant.
For those not in the know, the Ordinance Tyrant could call artillery strikes in on his own units, I think without having to roll for scatter? He was the only unit in the game who could target his own troops, and it was brilliantly merciless.
This meant that you could run absolute worthless chod infantry tarpits up the board, assault with them, and then call a barrage down on top of both your own men, and whoever they were fighting.
Monstrously cruel, hopelessly bleak, and opportunistically violent, for me, these rules were a perfect meshing of fluff and gameplay, and it made me absolutely determined to buy into the army. Was gutted when GW scrapped them, as I'd been planning to butcher a Creed mini, pop a respirator on his face, and replace his cigar hand with a withered-looking plaguebearer hand, and make him rain hate on foe and friend alike.
Moving your opponent's models is a greatly un(der)explored space in the game design atm.
Also soul burst. Balanced? Probably not. But it was always fun to try and string along multiple-combos of units soul-bursting of another units activation, etc.., etc.
Fun little fluffy interactions, like Flame and Melta weapons having 0 effects on the Avatar of Khaine, or C'tan being able to absorb the C'tan Phase Sword into themselves.
Even more recent stuff like 8th ed Quantum Shielding was an interesting and unique interaction.
I'll tell you one I remember fondly because of how awful it was. The transport rules from 4th edition. Oh my god they were painful. The look on my face when a penetration happened and they all had to pile out of the transport and take a pinning test, yeah I felt like they were amazing troops, so brave.
Fear denies faith, well they weren't very faithful I'll tell ya.
Sunny Side Up wrote: Lash of Submission, etc..
Moving your opponent's models is a greatly un(der)explored space in the game design atm.
Perhaps the greatest/worst example of that was the old grey knights apocalypse formation. If all chaos units on the table were destroyed the GK player had to give full control of their army to the chaos player(s) for the remainder of the battle.
Does Deathwatch actually having their signature ability, SIA, count?
And seriously now, I liked old FW marine chapters. Replacing all sergeants with apothecaries was neat and allowed you to play 'reasonable' marines - I suppose primaris now can kinda emulate it with their Helix adepts, but only on one unit. Come on, GW, if you insist on stupid wargear restrictions, at least allow taking HA on all primaris infantry (and give them old rules back, while we're at it)
There was also Tyrant's Legion, a very neat army of 'border' Space Marines, supplementing their strength with PDF and mercenaries. It allowed for TONS of counts as, my only complaint was how the utterly useless PDF were. Not even trained to IGconscript, never mind trooper standard? Pity the army is now dead, yes, I suppose you can ally IG but it's just not the same as having big squads with SM 'commissars' and IG tanks with SM crews...
Bobthehero wrote: Instant death from attacks whose strength is twice as much as the target toughness
Ah, yes, the old 'leaning on a bike makes me immune to lascannons, melta guns, and krak missiles'
Bobthehero wrote: Instant death from attacks whose strength is twice as much as the target toughness
Ah, yes, the old 'leaning on a bike makes me immune to lascannons, melta guns, and krak missiles'
That definitely varied by edition, then - Instant death generally didn't care about where your +1T came from, it just looked for the base T (at least to start with).
Well, in the 4th ed, assault cannons has rending, D2, and the target lost a wound by HITTING on 6+.
My assault cannon based army with Termies and Landspeeders was almost unbeatable.
My units used to deep strike on one side of the battle field, erased everything on that side of the board and them moved towards the center eliminating the rest.
In a tourney, I deleted my friend's Tau army that way. My friend Eric was again upset.
I loved the old rules too and it got me thinking, there's nothing to stop you making your own rules and using them even in competative play.
Just make them act randomly: scatter dice for movement, flip a coin to decide whether or not to advance/shoot/charge etc
I'm definately adding a squad to my RT ork project, in which i'll also try and recreate my favourite rules from 'Ere We Go for me were the Blood Axe clan having human advisors, imperial vehicles (not neccessarily looted, could have been traded) and Ogryn. of course all Orks could take primitive Ogryns, but only Blood Axes got Ripper Guns.
AngryAngel80 wrote: I'll tell you one I remember fondly because of how awful it was. The transport rules from 4th edition. Oh my god they were painful. The look on my face when a penetration happened and they all had to pile out of the transport and take a pinning test, yeah I felt like they were amazing troops, so brave.
I remember at the time just how nuts that was.
Full squad of 10,000 year old veteran Berzerkers. Thrashing and bloodthirsty, crammed in their Rhino, chanting threats and devotions to Khorne as they rumble towards the enemy. Then, suddenly, an errant shot knocks off the Rhino's combi-bolter and the Berzerkers bail and hit the deck!
The TAR were good. The TVR, not so good. And the rules only got worse from there, until they slapped a wounds system on vehicles which never made any sense. Now you can die two different ways!
I might be in the minority, but I liked in 7th the army building rules of formations made from formations. I thought it was a cool way to build armies, and encouraged me to bring units I never would have otherwise used. I had a lot of fun with Khorne Bloodbound using that.
I also miss the psychic power lore tables you had to roll on, and all the psychic power lores you could use from the core rulebook.
Bobthehero wrote: Instant death from attacks whose strength is twice as much as the target toughness
Ah, yes, the old 'leaning on a bike makes me immune to lascannons, melta guns, and krak missiles'
It used to be that bikers and such had Toughness 4/5. They were T5 for the purposes of general damage but stull suffered Instant Death as if they were T4.
I really liked that rule, actually. Just seemed a nice little touch.
the_scotsman wrote: The one I miss most is provably old zogwart, the weirdboy special character. He had a power that let you turn an opponents character into a squig, and have a basic little statlime for it.
It was short range and ultimately unlikely to happen AND you didnt count as having actually killed them if they were the warlord, but god it was so great.
Yeah, that was my favorite option as well. A real gamble as the character was quite bad and utterly expensive, and overall more a liability for the ork army than a valuable asset, but still that successful turning of an enemy character into a squig once every 10 games was really a lot of fun.
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jeff white wrote: Overwatch. Initiative. Fixed variable charge and move distance. Vehicle facing. Templates. Larger tables. The rule of cool.
Rule of cool aside, they're all things/mechanics that I'm really glad they're gone. But maybe I'm biased because they all affected in a very negative way my main army.
I do miss smaller formats, 1500 points mostly, as the most popular standard for army sizes though. And also that wrecked vehicles became terrain instead of being removed.
I'll second vehicle facings, WS & I being a part of the game, actual moral instead of "everyone takes Mortal Wounds like Daemonic Instability", templates, and the Avatar being immune to heat weapons.
I also miss the original Mandrake deployment rules, characters on bikes (including for armies I never played), Daemons being immune to poison, overwatch as something you declared, and the original Commissar summary execution.
The entire War of the Ring ruleset. My lord what a fantastically written set of rules. Blows every fantasy game I have played out of the water. The army balancing was awful, but when you take some time to rebalance things the game is fantastic. Magic is powerful and consistent (no random head popping), you get what you pay for. Artillery is satisfying without being overly random. Armor value negatively modifies wound rolls, meaning less rolling in general to speed the game along. Extremely simple and well designed regiment movement. Thanks Matt Ward!
Having an entire army of Elysians come down haphazardly, with no idea of when they'd show up or exactly where they'd land, was a very fun sort of chaos.
It also created incentive to take transports or just deploy normally. Having your star unit potentially not there when you needed it- or worse, scatter onto terrain and be instakilled- was a real risk.
Being able to choose exactly when and where a unit appears, then able to shoot and charge before the enemy has any opportunity to react, feels a little too 'gotchahammer' for my liking.
For me when it comes to Eldar, it's the Warp Spiders old flicker jump effect, for when they get targeted for a shooting attack. They got to immediately make a 12" move, which I think was also in any direction so long as it took them away from the unit shooting at them.
How did that work? Was it able to make the shoting attack fail if they got out of range or out of LoS?
Yeah, and it was annoying as hell. Worst of all, it happened every time something targeted them.
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KingmanHighborn wrote: The catch and kill nature of sweeping advance in 3rd edition. Oh and charging out of transports, and templates. And armor facing values.
Yeah, it meshed really well with models that could instantly pass those sweeping advance rolls. Though they were mostly elites, and none of them save for a few, were terminator variants. Hell, Necrons could even give their units crusader a while back through their over lord.
I miss vehicle facings/armor value- they made vehicle placement a thought process rather than just plunking them down on the table. It also made you very aware of where enemy heavy weapons were since you didn't want them behind you.
I really miss the split second that you were allowed to have cult terminators. I had a unit of noise termies complete with blast masters, sonic blasters and doom sirens.
I miss the dizzying array of grenades that were available when I first started. A couple have been mentioned already (vortex, smoke) but also blind, gas, sleep... and if you had auto-senses (SMs) you were immune to flash, respirator you were immune to gas, etc. They didn’t come up a ton but were fun and great for scenarios without having to homebrew.
I also generally miss the more complex nature of the game in earlier editions. I understand and appreciate taking out some of the stuff that really bogged things down unnecessarily, but I feel like it’s gone way too far, to the point of “dumbing down”. Give me a few tables to roll on and cross reference, damn it!
posermcbogus wrote: I haven't been able to track the exact wording down online, and my old copy of Vraks is back in the UK, but maybe the rules I've loved most dearly were the ones for the R&H Ordinance Tyrant.
For those not in the know, the Ordinance Tyrant could call artillery strikes in on his own units, I think without having to roll for scatter? He was the only unit in the game who could target his own troops, and it was brilliantly merciless.
This meant that you could run absolute worthless chod infantry tarpits up the board, assault with them, and then call a barrage down on top of both your own men, and whoever they were fighting.
Monstrously cruel, hopelessly bleak, and opportunistically violent, for me, these rules were a perfect meshing of fluff and gameplay, and it made me absolutely determined to buy into the army. Was gutted when GW scrapped them, as I'd been planning to butcher a Creed mini, pop a respirator on his face, and replace his cigar hand with a withered-looking plaguebearer hand, and make him rain hate on foe and friend alike.
That's awesome! I had no idea that was a thing.
Yes it was a thing, it was thematically really fitting aswell but it was a 7th edition thing....
And got abused to all hell and back: You combined the Vraks supplement (7th edition one), which limited some normal R&H options, went nurgle, took the purge formation (yes from the purge warband), which made pieplate weaponry leave dangerous terrain for a turn. Did we also mention that the ordinance tyrant made Artillery pieces Troops (smaller batteries like the heavy mortar or thudd/ quad gun) and Elites (for the big nasty things). Generally if you played that competetively you'd abuse access to plague zombies with a 4+++ troopslot arty for backfield since you could double stack up on them since you still could use the Heavy support slots and got more access to HS slots aswell because you'd use Vraks which got a modification on the FOC...
So it was simultaniously great and absolute nonsense.
Generally though, that was an issue with it being 7th edition, and formation shareing since R&H counted as CSM for access to allies etc.
That being said, R&H core rules (IA 13) overall were a lot of fun, and i dare say, except this exemple above with the worst edition to day, one of the better balanced lists and factions.
Further than that, they were customizable to your imagination. Probably one of the conceptually and overall balanced best interpretations a faction ever had in 40k.
Nowadays though, legends, nothing remains of that charm and customizability anymore.
- A huge variety of environmental effects actually having a stat value proportional to their effect. Doesn't matter if it's a vehicle explosion, psychic power, rending effect or toxic gas, GW seem content to just give them the generic, boring "do a Mortal Wound".
- The armoury each army got access to. Some of it was useful, some were just less tactical, fluffy choices which I enjoyed. They've tried to bring it back a little with Special-Issue Wargear but that's only for Marines, and also just still rather boring; oh this item give me -1 to hit. Not bad but just so boring.
There has never been a better time to try ProHammer than right now.
All this cool stuff everyone is mentioning? You can have it all back. With a lot of games stores not doing normal in-person gaming still, many of us are pushed back into garage hammer anyway - which is a perfect opportunity to give ProHammer a shot.
Scanning through the favored old rules in the thread so far, and how they line up with ProHammer....
Instant Death ... check (although slightly tweaked to do D3 wounds)
Vehicle damage charts ... check
Ld test to shoot at not-closest ... sort check (ProHammer uses declared fire and has screening rules)
Madboyz ... check ... I just played a game using the 3rd ed Feral Ork madboyz
Tyranid biomorphs ... check (use older codex)
Flamer templates ... check
Shooting into close combat ... check (added by ProHammer)
Difficult terrain random move distance ... check (with some logical adjustments to how it works)
Indirect fire ... sorta check (doesn't require guessing the range, but it scatters)
Ordinance weapons ... check
Initiative stat ... check
Wargear options ... check
Scatter dice ... check
Minor psychic powers ... check (from codexes)
Characters on bikes ... check
Blast weapons ... check
Falling back from failed morale tests ... check
Overwatch ... check (2nd edition style)
Vehicle facing ... check
Larger tables ... check
Sweeping advances ... check (but slightly toned down from their peak)
Charging out of transports .. check (but you lose charge bonus unless open-topped or assault vehicle)
USRs... check
Global psychic powers ... check
WS vs WS in melee ... check
Actual morale tests ... check
Vehicle wrecks remaining (or turning into craters!) ... check
Randomized deep strike ... check (although it's been tweaked in a creative and slightly fairer way)
Flyer rules ... check
Grenade attacks vs vehicles in CC ... check
Grenades in general ... check
Codex armories ... check
Without Number and Psychology, particularly panic. But stupidity and fear/terror was nice. I think 7th would have benefitted from it being an active part of the game, as the whole go-to-ground as an option was cool.
Nurglitch wrote: Without Number and Psychology, particularly panic. But stupidity and fear/terror was nice. I think 7th would have benefitted from it being an active part of the game, as the whole go-to-ground as an option was cool.
Yes the removal of psychology rules and break tests in both 40k and fantasy/AoS has been a detriment to both for me. I wonder if this Old World project going on will reintroduce them.
Another vote for blast templates. Yeah, it was fuzzier, but having a direct representation of a massive explosion scatter onto a fracas had an impact to it that you just do not get with the blander abstraction of dice rolling a high number of shots, to say nothing of the hilarity potential of accidentally shelling your own troops.
-I'll throw another bone to IG platoons, RIP.
-Templates... doesn't feel the same without them and I liked the potential to hit multiple units, even unintentionally.
-Wrecked vehicles staying on the field. I still do this with house rules unless the vehicle outright explodes.
Rules that I miss:
-Being able to take named characters in your army without worrying about sub-faction (eg, Calgar not being limited to an Ultramarines detachment only). Takes away a lot of possibilities, doesn't let you do a counts-as approach and forces GW to make sub-factions with special characters weaker in order to compensate for their advantages. Oh and it doesn't help that generic HQs have become far less flavourful too.
-Tank shock & Death of Glory. Probably best that this is gone, but I used to love trolling people who forgot that this was a thing as my Rhinos suddenly became the deadliest unit on the board. I had one Rhino tank shock 500pts worth of minis in one turn because they didn't think it would be a threat and didn't bother to shoot it.
Some faction-specific nostalgia:
-Tyranid mutations in 3rd ed. I get why they're gone, but man they gave you a lot of cool flexibility that has never been replicated.
-Lone Wolves! Why are these guys gone, they're so damn cool! I get that it doesn't make a lot of sense for a depressed Space Wolf to suddenly have more wounds and FNP, but they were a lot of fun and I loved how you had to try to get them killed or risk losing VPs.
-Iron Priest Thunderwolves. I have 2 of these guys converted and they look awesome, now I have to run them as generic TWC or a Wolf Lord or something.
-Space Wolves being able to take Leman Russ tanks. Not because our variant was any good, mind you, but it was flavourful.
-Inquisition being a legitimate option. Now they're basically just a supplemental HQ choice with a few agents that will never see play because they're not worth all the opportunity costs of running an additional detachment.
Andilus Greatsword wrote: -Inquisition being a legitimate option. Now they're basically just a supplemental HQ choice with a few agents that will never see play because they're not worth all the opportunity costs of running an additional detachment.
It's weird seeing people say that they miss Inquisition as a faction, I missed that phase entirely. Back in the way back when they were pretty much like the Assassins, they were rare additions to an Imperial force and were solo agents. I converted one out of Fabius Bile - I spent hours filing down his coat to removed the stitches holding the patches of skin together (and the occasional face!). I gave him a combi-bolter (plasma one from a Dark Angels model) and a power sword. Wish I still had him.
The one that really got a laugh out of me, and to that point made me wonder just what GW was thinking at the time. Was the *infinite range* rule for some wargear/weapons.
Now this may not seem like much to some of you, but some of the older players like myself. May have memories of using this rule to play some rather funny shenanigans against the enemy. One of my favorites being the fact that most shops that ran organized play, would allow you to use this rule on another table's army. FULL STOP.
In you could see another game going on at another table, then there was very little stopping you from launching your vortex missiles onto their board, and into their troop formations.
In my nearly 15 years of playing I had never seen this happen, personally I only saw this referenced on 1d4chan. Something not to be taken seriously. How would you feel if someone ruined your game by dropping a random deathstrike missile on you?
If we're talking about old rules. Sometimes I do miss templates. They just seemed to do more damage than the new D6 system. Even the new Blast rule hasn't really fixed this. I also remember it being more accurate than a leman russes current BS4+.
Armour values are another thing I miss. My leman russ tanks actually felt durable with AV14 and you felt the difference of a melta gun getting within half range or if an enemy charged you. Now they just seem to be protected by wet paper.
The facing arcs did lead to a lot of arguments though.
The Codex: Witchhunters Acts of Faith rules were baller. Not that I dislike Miracle Dice, but those were some hardcore miracles compared to the current guaranteed roll.
In my nearly 15 years of playing I had never seen this happen, personally I only saw this referenced on 1d4chan. Something not to be taken seriously. How would you feel if someone ruined your game by dropping a random deathstrike missile on you?.
Under the right circumstances, this'd be hilarious. If I was unquestionably steamrolling and someone on another table said they wanted to Deathstrike me in the face to even out the game, I'd be totally cool with it.
ID from 2x strength - IMO a better use and representation of the wounds mechanic than damage vs. wounds.
3e-7e Armor Save Rules - This made bringing the right weapon on the right target feel decisive compared to the wrong weapon [a battle cannon would paste an entire squad of Marines or Sisters, while a Heavy Bolter wound just bounce off. Nowadays, they basically feel and do the same thing.]
5e Vehicle Rules - Much more satisfying and decisive feeling than the spongy hitpoints. Also, it made a meaningful distinction between antitank weapons, which fired one big shot, and rapid-firing weapons for targeting heavy infantry, which usually couldn't engage vehicles very successfully due to S<8.
I liked the old morale rules. It is a shame they very rarely mattered because just like today 90% of the units in the game outright ignored them or at least didn't care about the most important aspects (sweeping advance for example).
It's the one aspect were I think they simplified too much in 8th, and so far the one additional step in 9th doesn't make morale anymore interesting, it just means morale matters even less. And of the Codizes we've seen most ignore the new mechanic of attrition making it seem dead on arrival.
Maybe at some point they come out with interesting morale rules again, I wouldn't mind if they were faction specific for Guard, Tyranids, Orks and Tau. All the other factions are millenia old badasses or robots that don't really care
Sgt. Cortez wrote: ...All the other factions are millenia old badasses or robots that don't really care...
And therein lies the issue - multiple factions have solid justifications for ignoring some or all of any morale rules GW puts out, and in order to keep up the rest of the factions end up almost needing (certainly wanting) to have their own workarounds, so even they don't always have to use the rules, and that point why bother writing them?
All-time favourite is the rules for the 2e Ork Battlewagon. The transport capacity was "as many models as you could fit onto it". Any models that fell off in play had actually fallen off, and took damage.
I fondly remember tactics that were considered 'cheese' at the time but were actual tactics, like Fish of Fury. You want faction differences to matter? There is a perfect example.
I loved the Hop Splatt for the Orks, I remember a game where it just kept going through my friends marine army and then came back to do almost as much damage to me.
In my nearly 15 years of playing I had never seen this happen, personally I only saw this referenced on 1d4chan. Something not to be taken seriously. How would you feel if someone ruined your game by dropping a random deathstrike missile on you?
If we're talking about old rules. Sometimes I do miss templates. They just seemed to do more damage than the new D6 system. Even the new Blast rule hasn't really fixed this. I also remember it being more accurate than a leman russes current BS4+.
Armour values are another thing I miss. My leman russ tanks actually felt durable with AV14 and you felt the difference of a melta gun getting within half range or if an enemy charged you. Now they just seem to be protected by wet paper.
The facing arcs did lead to a lot of arguments though.
Yeah, I can understand that you didn't run across it. I think it's mainly because most people just never thought about it as being a legitimate option in play. It eventually became an escalation rule for the two shops that I frequented at the time, or something that was viable for team play in coordinated play. (i.e. When one team member took control of a specific terrain piece during their game, and the rules dictated that they could fire the one shot.)
As for me, I've been on the receiving end of this, and yes it did suck. It wasn't a deathstrike though thankfully. So there are some good upsides to some of this in the end.
As for vehicles, I disliked some of the more abused rules for armor, and how some issues with vehicle facing ended up with more arguments than resolutions at the table. Much like Orks with their own special rules that dictated if a round would just fly right through the vehicle. But what got me was some of the walkers, especially the Ironclad dreadnought. As there was apperantly a way to give it 16 Av on the front for one round, and 15Av on both the sides and rear. It has been a long time since then, so I am most likely missing something in translation.
I do still miss bubble wrapping a leman russ with 20 guardsman and feeling like it was for a good reason... I miss playing IG...
If that happened to me, I'd feel totally entitled to ignore it and carry on. If you've agreed to it, fine - I've used something like it in an Apocalypse game across two tables where any weapon with sufficient range could fire from one to the other - but it's no different to me going over to that other table and taking all the terrain away.
"unlimited range" isn't a rule allowing you to play in a different game, no matter what idiots online think.
I can't see how one could legit make the case that two separate game's can impact each other. Things that go "off the table" are considered out of play.
Certainly if players involved in multiple games agree to it, sure, anything goes. But as an actual enforceable rule? I don't think so.
Yeah, I can understand that you didn't run across it. I think it's mainly because most people just never thought about it as being a legitimate option in play. It eventually became an escalation rule for the two shops that I frequented at the time, or something that was viable for team play in coordinated play. (i.e. When one team member took control of a specific terrain piece during their game, and the rules dictated that they could fire the one shot.)
As for me, I've been on the receiving end of this, and yes it did suck. It wasn't a deathstrike though thankfully. So there are some good upsides to some of this in the end.
I don't mind this being a friendly thing, but the idea of someone "phoning up" and saying their launching a Deathstrike missile onto their table is just the definition of troll. How could you be certain that they're even playing a game wherever they're calling from? How could you tell they didn't just make up the whole thing?
Also, there's also the narrative issue. 40k takes place across the entire Milky Way galaxy and potentially across completely different time periods. That means both players on the table would have to agree that they are playing on the same planet and same time period as the person making the unlimited range attack.
What's to say I couldn't aim a 72" railgun or battlecannon off my table edge and claim a percentage of its range has managed to reach their sector? What if my Marine devastator sat on the table edge and fired their lascannon "off the board edge" then claimed their laser hit another players centrepiece model.
It's just too open to abuse, doesn't make sense outside narrative play, and just doesn't seem fair to whoever is hit with it. This was never a rule, if you played with it in store it was certainly a house rule.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I miss the game having vehicles. Current 'vehicles' aren't much different from anything else.
I don't hate how they changed vehicles to wounds rather than AV but I do think vehicles in general need to be more tankie. Something like:
- More wounds. Things like a Leman Russ should be something like 14 wounds minimum, or a Land Raider should be 18 wounds.
- Anything that had an AV of 14 should have an armour save of 2+: Land Raiders already do, but Baneblades and Macharius Heavy Tanks don't. Even if those tanks only get a 2+ save against shooting attacks and a 3+ save in engagement range to represent the old "hit rear armour in melee."
- The Terrain rules need to be tweaked: Models with 18 wounds or more can be seen normally. This should be changed to 20 wounds or more. - Some kind of bonus against chip damage for heavier vehicles: Something like light vehicles don't ignore any AP. Medium vehicles (10 - 15 wounds) treat AP-1 as AP0. Heavy vehicles (16 wounds or more) treat AP-2 as AP0.
Something needs to be done to make vehicles feel like vehicles again. Big Guns Never Tire was a step in the right direction but not enough to really do anything about vehicle durability in an edition where everything is becoming more deadly.
Same goes to Blast. It's a nice concept, but not enough to really swing anything unless its 11+ models. It should really be changed to trigger at 5 models instead of 6, and simply apply to every D6 of damage rather than per weapon.
I really miss the Goff Rockers. Or the Weird boy that could have gotten possessed by a chaos entity (all the way up to a greater daemon). I miss the wargear card "ablative armour" and "rad grenade", hell, i miss Wargear cards in general.
I miss the 3rd edition BA codex as a whole. I loved that black rage wasn't a guaranteed unit purchase (unless you took lemartes or a chaplain *i think*) but comprised of the random chance of the units in your army succumbing to the rage and joining the death company.
I miss terminators saving on 2d6. lol.
I miss the liber daemonic and the grimoire of true names on an inquisitor in the 4th edition demon hunters codex. actually, I just miss that codex. that was a great book for the kind of just doing what you wanted and moving in a direction that you liked. it was a really wide open (and i suppose abusable book).
Oddly enough, i actually miss the old armor penetration system from 2nd edition. I didnt mind using different dice (D20, D12, etc etc) for armour penetration because it created a much mroe granular approach to armour penetration.
I think mostly, i miss the rule where a multimelta could be used as a heavy flamer if you wished it so.
oh, and robots.
like, program before you play robots. no castellans. real imperial robots. and the imperial assassian. the one with tabi-boots on. I need to find that model. Calgar on his throne, and the 3 pack of land raiders for like 20.00.
lol. what a wild and absolutely enjoyable ride this hobby has given me.
Units not allowing you to get other units. Might sound odd but I love the old chaos gods rules for instance. If you pick Tzeentch deamons you may not pick Khorne deamons. Same with Nurgle and Slaanesh. The rival gods hate each other and their units don’t mix. I think Abaddon let you break that rule. Inquisition had a rule that if you picked deamonhosts you where not allowed to pick grey knights. Commander farsight only allowed one of each tau codex entry, with the exception of battle suits. You could bring all the battle suits.
Some faction specific rules like space wolves having hatred (+to hit in melee) for Dark angels and thousand sons. All blood angels having furious charge... in fact most of the old blood angels rules. Red thirst and such. Guards doctrines and space marine... what where they called? Tactics? I guess the stuff that made armies feel particularly unique, even though they where poorly executed sometimes.
Only special characters with your opponents consent, and only within certain point limits.
quite a few people saying "Special characters by opponent's permission only" and I'm curious... how many of you have turned away opponents' special characters? and how often did it come up?
Nerak wrote: Units not allowing you to get other units. Might sound odd but I love the old chaos gods rules for instance. If you pick Tzeentch deamons you may not pick Khorne deamons. Same with Nurgle and Slaanesh. The rival gods hate each other and their units don’t mix. I think Abaddon let you break that rule. Inquisition had a rule that if you picked deamonhosts you where not allowed to pick grey knights. Commander farsight only allowed one of each tau codex entry, with the exception of battle suits. You could bring all the battle suits.
Some faction specific rules like space wolves having hatred (+to hit in melee) for Dark angels and thousand sons. All blood angels having furious charge... in fact most of the old blood angels rules. Red thirst and such. Guards doctrines and space marine... what where they called? Tactics? I guess the stuff that made armies feel particularly unique, even though they where poorly executed sometimes.
Only special characters with your opponents consent, and only within certain point limits.
The rival gods were Khorne vs Slaanesh and Tzeentch vs Nurgle.
I remember fondly the 2nd edition vehicle damage system. Once my dreadnought took out a chaos biker with an assault cannon. The bike careened out of control and hit the dreadnought, destroying the assault cannon.
Rihgu wrote: quite a few people saying "Special characters by opponent's permission only" and I'm curious... how many of you have turned away opponents' special characters? and how often did it come up?
It never came up. No one wanted to be 'that guy' (by bringing SCs).
For most of that rule's existence no one, not even GW, pretended that most of them weren't horribly broken. They were for WD showcase articles and narrative campaigns about whichever SC smacking down NPCs. (Or setting up a duel between two broken characters for the laughs)
Rihgu wrote: quite a few people saying "Special characters by opponent's permission only" and I'm curious... how many of you have turned away opponents' special characters? and how often did it come up?
It never came up. No one wanted to be 'that guy' (by bringing SCs).
For most of that rule's existence no one, not even GW, pretended that most of them weren't horribly broken. They were for WD showcase articles and narrative campaigns about whichever SC smacking down NPCs. (Or setting up a duel between two broken characters for the laughs)
Doesn't that just kinda make them a waste of Codex space, then?
Wouldn't it be better to just make them balanced and therefore not an issue? (Or, even better, make it so they're just specific builds of highly customizable generic characters.)
Rihgu wrote: quite a few people saying "Special characters by opponent's permission only" and I'm curious... how many of you have turned away opponents' special characters? and how often did it come up?
It never came up. No one wanted to be 'that guy' (by bringing SCs).
For most of that rule's existence no one, not even GW, pretended that most of them weren't horribly broken. They were for WD showcase articles and narrative campaigns about whichever SC smacking down NPCs. (Or setting up a duel between two broken characters for the laughs)
Doesn't that just kinda make them a waste of Codex space, then?
Wouldn't it be better to just make them balanced and therefore not an issue? (Or, even better, make it so they're just specific builds of highly customizable generic characters.)
Waste of codex AND designer time AND production capacity. I can see why they dropped that rule.
Oborosen wrote: This is something that I've always been somewhat interested on hearing for some time. It happens that I was going through some of my older books, codices, imperil amour.. etc etc.
I managed to go down a rather interesting rabbit hold of rules, abilities, and just a few other interesting tidbits that made those armies so fun back in the day.
The one that really got a laugh out of me, and to that point made me wonder just what GW was thinking at the time. Was the *infinite range* rule for some wargear/weapons.
Now this may not seem like much to some of you, but some of the older players like myself. May have memories of using this rule to play some rather funny shenanigans against the enemy. One of my favorites being the fact that most shops that ran organized play, would allow you to use this rule on another table's army. FULL STOP.
In you could see another game going on at another table, then there was very little stopping you from launching your vortex missiles onto their board, and into their troop formations.
It may seem weird, or outlandish, but the premise also held true with GW shops as well. And if you so happened to call them up from several states away, they would most likely honor the rule.
I've been playing for decades, and I've never heard or seen anyone play with this rule.
Nerak wrote: Units not allowing you to get other units. Might sound odd but I love the old chaos gods rules for instance. If you pick Tzeentch deamons you may not pick Khorne deamons. Same with Nurgle and Slaanesh. The rival gods hate each other and their units don’t mix.
The rival gods were Khorne vs Slaanesh and Tzeentch vs Nurgle.
Oh, haha. What a mistake, that’s pretty basic lore.
Rihgu wrote: quite a few people saying "Special characters by opponent's permission only" and I'm curious... how many of you have turned away opponents' special characters? and how often did it come up?
What I liked about this rule is two things. First that GW accepted that special characters are very powerful. Second that it normalized a no special Characters policy at events and tournaments. You’d be hard pressed to find an event that doesn’t allow special characters today. Today you might think of it as a way to incentivize keyword diversity. The strongest special character comes with a keyword tax that leads to less army (and Colour scheme) diversity. Of course keywords didn’t exist back then but a similar logic applies.
if there was one crime comitted by GW than it was that they decided to hand out subfactions rules despite knowing that a price tag was needed to balance them, for free.
FWIW, the Arch demagogue devotions work as a an singular upgrade to the R&H command squad leader. He automatically has to be the warlord of your army if that happens:
So what excactly did these devotions do?
Basically they came associated with a pts cost, varying depending upon type of devotion you chose.
They then generally modified your Demagogue, rangeing from somewhat insignificant to quite a hefty switch in model. (heretek magus gave t4 SV 3+ and a 6+++ up from a generic commander profile) Others just gave a mark for free and fanatic (morale interaction) .
However most of these also modified your army in a specific way via unlocking specific equipment options and having other stipulations: one of my favourite exemples was the "Master of the horde". (Was a 20 pts upgrade and no effect on your Demagogue, however it increased the max squad size for militia to 30. ) Vs "bloody handed reaver"
However any Militia squad having more than 15 models at the start of the game under such a demagogue could if destroyed or fled roll a d6. On a 5+ the full squad reentered active reserve and would show up again.
So what exactly is militia: Basically think of it as a Conscript, without armor. 10-20 per Squad. 3-5 squads form a platoon. They got upgrades though, bulk upgrades infact with fixed cost. F.e. Militia training for 10 pts which increased their 5+/5+ BS / ws to guardsmen 4+/4+. This made a platoon troop choice, into something that you actually wanted to field and not in a MSU style, which was a huge paradigm change compared to any other army.
Meanwhile the militia under the bloody handed reaver got turned into traitor guardsmen, yes including bulk upgrade unlocked for actual flak armour. However he also forced you to buy militia training on all units. So you have suddendly two differing playstyles, tied to cost albeit with different uses within one upgrade differentiation. Which you then could customize of course to your liking.
And you know what, that wasn't even the most radical modification you could do.
Platoon structure.
Advisors.
Customizable troop units.
The no special carachter rule also allowed for generic charachters to have some specific modifications to your FoC slot and overall lead to more customizable charachters and more time invested into equipement options and other such things for them. Nowadays it's all about those big centerpieces dominating whole factions and playstyles... and i don't think it's good .
Oborosen wrote: This is something that I've always been somewhat interested on hearing for some time. It happens that I was going through some of my older books, codices, imperil amour.. etc etc.
I managed to go down a rather interesting rabbit hold of rules, abilities, and just a few other interesting tidbits that made those armies so fun back in the day.
The one that really got a laugh out of me, and to that point made me wonder just what GW was thinking at the time. Was the *infinite range* rule for some wargear/weapons.
Now this may not seem like much to some of you, but some of the older players like myself. May have memories of using this rule to play some rather funny shenanigans against the enemy. One of my favorites being the fact that most shops that ran organized play, would allow you to use this rule on another table's army. FULL STOP.
In you could see another game going on at another table, then there was very little stopping you from launching your vortex missiles onto their board, and into their troop formations.
It may seem weird, or outlandish, but the premise also held true with GW shops as well. And if you so happened to call them up from several states away, they would most likely honor the rule.
I've been playing for decades, and I've never heard or seen anyone play with this rule.
Because it isn't a rule. Matches on different tables aren't part of one big, continuous game that communicate with one another simply because a unit has 1:1 range on the other. GW themselves use the " table edges are the walls of the universe" idea all the time (even literally typing so in one of the 8th FAQs when people got silly). Affecting other tables is COOL, when it's a special rule in a one-off event that has simultaneous games running in parallel, but the idea being pushed here as some universal truth is utter bogus.
I liked the collection of rules that prevented first turn charges. Couldn't assault out of deep strike, had to deploy more than X inches away from opponents.
Rihgu wrote: quite a few people saying "Special characters by opponent's permission only" and I'm curious... how many of you have turned away opponents' special characters? and how often did it come up?
Didn't turn away SC's, though I do remember a few incarnations of SC characters being broken (Dante for a bit, I think?). Considering AC spam at the time and that 80% of people playing were the smurfs, I can see how people would not want to be dealing with that every match.
Thematically, though, it completely ruins the experience that every battle has Marneus Calgar or Eldrad or the tau tank guy, etc. leading the forces. I remember seeing Eldrad in every Eldar list for a while, which was interesting because this was quite a few years after the 13th Black Crusade and Eldrad was dead at the time but kept showing up in the codex.
Kind of how Space Marines ruin the setting thematically in that how they're a small number of extremely elite troops but show up to every minor skirmish. After a while, one kind of has to wonder how the Imperium is on the ropes since they seem to have more smurfs than 'Guard and now they have super space technology rivaling everyone but (arguably) Necrons.
Oborosen wrote: This is something that I've always been somewhat interested on hearing for some time. It happens that I was going through some of my older books, codices, imperil amour.. etc etc.
I managed to go down a rather interesting rabbit hold of rules, abilities, and just a few other interesting tidbits that made those armies so fun back in the day.
The one that really got a laugh out of me, and to that point made me wonder just what GW was thinking at the time. Was the *infinite range* rule for some wargear/weapons.
Now this may not seem like much to some of you, but some of the older players like myself. May have memories of using this rule to play some rather funny shenanigans against the enemy. One of my favorites being the fact that most shops that ran organized play, would allow you to use this rule on another table's army. FULL STOP.
In you could see another game going on at another table, then there was very little stopping you from launching your vortex missiles onto their board, and into their troop formations.
It may seem weird, or outlandish, but the premise also held true with GW shops as well. And if you so happened to call them up from several states away, they would most likely honor the rule.
I've been playing for decades, and I've never heard or seen anyone play with this rule.
Because it isn't a rule. Matches on different tables aren't part of one big, continuous game that communicate with one another simply because a unit has 1:1 range on the other. GW themselves use the " table edges are the walls of the universe" idea all the time (even literally typing so in one of the 8th FAQs when people got silly). Affecting other tables is COOL, when it's a special rule in a one-off event that has simultaneous games running in parallel, but the idea being pushed here as some universal truth is utter bogus.
We allowed this once during a campaign we ran way back in 5th shortly after Planet Strike came out. Was 8 player campaign with 3 being IG and they jokingly asked if one players basilisks could provide fire support to the other table due to them having the range. Everyone decided yes they could, but full scatter unless a MOO was in line of sight and shots had to occur in the same game turns on each table. Provided some fun and interesting moments for the campaign.
Blast templates! I know they aren't great for fast play or competitive play, but they were a lot of fun on casual game nights...
I used to love things like Vortexes of Doom or Deathstrike Missiles -- They weren't as deadly as say a ranged D-Weapon, but like, they had such a huge chance to change the game.
Also -- scatter deepstrike. It made deepstrike more finicky, but more fun for me? I used to love dropping in Seraphim with hand flamers. it was super risky, so when it would happen it was super cool, and when it didn't it would be like, "Well, happens, at least it was cool!"
...I guess I really liked the dumb cinematic rules lol
Duskweaver wrote: The gloriously random Ork Madboyz rules from the RT era. I'm not normally a fan of rolling on random charts, but for Madboyz it just felt right.
A Madmob could, for example, suddenly develop a violent hatred of the colour purple and attack the nearest unit featuring that colour in their banners or uniforms. Or start copying the behaviour of a randomly chosen enemy unit, moving to mirror their moves, shooting when they shoot, and so on. They might even split up into two separate units due to irreconcilable philosophical disagreements.
Yep. On more than one occssion I had a large group of them all throw away their grenades.
I don't mind this being a friendly thing, but the idea of someone "phoning up" and saying their launching a Deathstrike missile onto their table is just the definition of troll. How could you be certain that they're even playing a game wherever they're calling from? How could you tell they didn't just make up the whole thing?
Also, there's also the narrative issue. 40k takes place across the entire Milky Way galaxy and potentially across completely different time periods. That means both players on the table would have to agree that they are playing on the same planet and same time period as the person making the unlimited range attack.
What's to say I couldn't aim a 72" railgun or battlecannon off my table edge and claim a percentage of its range has managed to reach their sector? What if my Marine devastator sat on the table edge and fired their lascannon "off the board edge" then claimed their laser hit another players centrepiece model.
It's just too open to abuse, doesn't make sense outside narrative play, and just doesn't seem fair to whoever is hit with it. This was never a rule, if you played with it in store it was certainly a house rule.
Abuse and making sense outside of narrative play, isn't exactly something that Warhammer has the best history with. As it appears, this was something that arose with some strange sub-culture within the game, and other making use of the total absurdity of the games setting. As it was originally something that I ran across during convention play and unfortunately, most of that rule set was widely shifting through the first decade that I played.
Since I started this thread, I decided to go hunting for something that could shine some light on this "infinite range" issue, and I did come across an interesting story. It's anecdotal, but it still makes for an interesting thought experiment. http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/19749704/
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Seabass wrote: I really miss the Goff Rockers. Or the Weird boy that could have gotten possessed by a chaos entity (all the way up to a greater daemon). I miss the wargear card "ablative armour" and "rad grenade", hell, i miss Wargear cards in general.
Ooooo wargear cards...
Nothing like a grot on an attack bike, popping in due to polymorphine wearing terminator armor and armed with a power fist. All because someone at GW forgot to take RAW as an issue.
Those certainly were weird times.
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Rihgu wrote: quite a few people saying "Special characters by opponent's permission only" and I'm curious... how many of you have turned away opponents' special characters? and how often did it come up?
I believe it depends mostly on which character was being played. Because I've had a player request that I not play kaldor Draigo and he even took it to the tournament holder at the time.
This is something that I legitimately have no issue with. If you want to play any character, so long as they're legal for the format then more power to ya. As someone who's had four leviathan dreadnoughts in an Iron Hands detachment, dropped on his nose. I can tell you that named characters are not the worst that a player can throw at you.
Nowadays it's all about those big centerpieces dominating whole factions and playstyles... and i don't think it's good .
Agreed. I'm really not into the centerpiece model thing.
well, considering GW's track record with them.....
They also seem even less able to balance them..
For those of us who were around to see papa smurf be re-released in his new form... yeah. Balance was far and away in the back of their minds when they decided to release that thing.
Oborosen wrote: This is something that I've always been somewhat interested on hearing for some time. It happens that I was going through some of my older books, codices, imperil amour.. etc etc.
I managed to go down a rather interesting rabbit hold of rules, abilities, and just a few other interesting tidbits that made those armies so fun back in the day.
The one that really got a laugh out of me, and to that point made me wonder just what GW was thinking at the time. Was the *infinite range* rule for some wargear/weapons.
Now this may not seem like much to some of you, but some of the older players like myself. May have memories of using this rule to play some rather funny shenanigans against the enemy. One of my favorites being the fact that most shops that ran organized play, would allow you to use this rule on another table's army. FULL STOP.
In you could see another game going on at another table, then there was very little stopping you from launching your vortex missiles onto their board, and into their troop formations.
It may seem weird, or outlandish, but the premise also held true with GW shops as well. And if you so happened to call them up from several states away, they would most likely honor the rule.
I've been playing for decades, and I've never heard or seen anyone play with this rule.
I keep hearing that, so I'm starting to wonder if it only creeped up in certain situations. I first heard about it in the early 90s, during a convention and I was able to see it used at that same convention. So I'm starting to go back and look up exactly where it came from.
I’ve seen this happen at the 40k friendly event at adepticon. Anyone with a death strike was allowed to fire at another table so people were bribing them with swag/gift cards/booze.
Rihgu wrote: quite a few people saying "Special characters by opponent's permission only" and I'm curious... how many of you have turned away opponents' special characters? and how often did it come up?
It never came up. No one wanted to be 'that guy' (by bringing SCs).
For most of that rule's existence no one, not even GW, pretended that most of them weren't horribly broken. They were for WD showcase articles and narrative campaigns about whichever SC smacking down NPCs. (Or setting up a duel between two broken characters for the laughs)
Doesn't that just kinda make them a waste of Codex space, then?
Wouldn't it be better to just make them balanced and therefore not an issue? (Or, even better, make it so they're just specific builds of highly customizable generic characters.)
In practice, it just meant you didn't use special characters in your pick-up games. They were reserved for narrative campaigns and mutually arranged battles.
It's only a waste of codex space if you consider anything not suited to Matched Play to inherently be a waste.
I think I preferred when special characters weren't such a core part of the game, but that's just me. The balance was cleaner (see: Mars with Cawl, or Guilliman with Ultramarines) and it reinforced the Your Dudes aspect. I would have been fine with that idea you suggest of having them be specific builds of customizable characters.
MoshJason wrote: Blast templates! I know they aren't great for fast play or competitive play, but they were a lot of fun on casual game nights...
I used to love things like Vortexes of Doom or Deathstrike Missiles -- They weren't as deadly as say a ranged D-Weapon, but like, they had such a huge chance to change the game.
Also -- scatter deepstrike. It made deepstrike more finicky, but more fun for me? I used to love dropping in Seraphim with hand flamers. it was super risky, so when it would happen it was super cool, and when it didn't it would be like, "Well, happens, at least it was cool!"
...I guess I really liked the dumb cinematic rules lol
I really miss rules that made certain tactical decisions a risk/reward balance like scatter deepstrike. How close do you want to try and land your deepstrike? Close for instant use or farther away for safety? I lost many a squad of Elysian's to gutsy drops, but I won many a game because of a drop going perfectly.
Blast scatter goes here as well. Seeing my Elysian's demo charge scatter back and kill the whole squad to seeing a basilisk scatter off the intended target just to bullseye a different enemy squad and wipe them instead.
I miss shooting into combat, all of the truly odd orky weapons (hop-splat in particular - 3 rockets chained together and firing boosters randomly.. because Orks?) that would likely do more damage to YOU than your non-Ork opponent but were just tear jerkingly funny. I was also a huge fan of the result on the Predator's damage table that would cause the turret to be launched into the air and come down a place determined by the scatter dice. Possibly injuring a random squad in the process.
And your friends would lose it when they failed and you killed one with a grot All praise snake-eyes
That was one of the things which made it awesome! For us it wasn't a Grot, but a Guardsmen who shot a Lvl4 Librarian in the eye with a Lasgun. I still remember it!
