As dissatisfaction with current editions grows, my group has been experimenting more and more with older editions. We started with 2nd, because it's got that ultra alien ultra old school ultra crazy vibe, and over time we have begun to become a bit more dissatisfied with it, mainly due to...well...the big, huge, glaring balance issues with 2nd edition.
Insta-kill mechanics being everywhere, heavy weapons being so bananas insane crazy powerful that you dont usually in practice even get to use any of your fun zany vehicle damage tables bespoke to each vehicle because a shot from a multi-melta at max range hits every facing on the vehicle you put it over and then fishes for the "it instantly dies" result on 4 different tables, usually getting at least one. Marines being super comically weak because the amount of AP in the game would make late 9th ed blush (-1AP on a lasgun? Seriously??)
After a couple of crazy whacky games getting to grips with the system, people have applied even just the tiniest little bit of tactical decision making to the system (even still running ultra casual old-school armies) and it's reached the point where games are even more decisively lethal than 9th ed/10th ed. Which, to be fair, if you actually go read 2nd ed batreps in white dwarf....holds true for the games GW was playing at the time as well.
So, I'm coming to you, ye great paragons of crusty knowledge: When exactly were 'the good old days'? What was the best codex your faction ever had? We're strongly considering 4th edition as the main core rule set, and trying to decide whether to pick a specific point in time, and use the codex for each faction from that moment, or whether we should choose an "Iconic Codex" for each faction in the range of like 3.5e to 5e, whichever one is most fondly remembered - the 3.5e chaos and imperial guard 'dex, the Witch Hunters dex for sisters, the 5th ed dark eldar dex so they can have their full model range...and possibly trying to use an edition-based points handicap (e.g. 3rd ed player gets X number more pts to play with) if theres a significant imbalance between a 3e book and a 5e book.
What are your thoughts? How do you feel about the various books your faction got between 3-5? Were any of them "The Book"? Are the 3rd ed books universally more fun and we should just use 3e books with 4e rules?
The game, the time, the place. All of it just came together. Games in my garage on a cobbled together table, games in the shop.
At that point I was still discovering 40K properly, so every WD or Codex was a trove of new information and inspiration.
Also, whilst Incredibly Wonky, the game was so much fun to play. Blast a turret off a tank and see it land on something, squishing it. Space Marine Chief Librarian in Terminator Armour, on Combat Drugs and with Iron Man just absolutely butchering anything that came near him.
Avatars mulching stuff in combat. Finding an old model at a boot fair, allowing me to field a unit still in my Codex but no longer sold.
Just a really, genuinely happy period in my life.
3rd Ed coincided with me leaving education, so as well as being horribly stripped down, my life situation became much more complex.
3rd to 4th edition codizes + all the Chapter Approved(?) things from White Dwarf at the time like additional rules for abhuman Guard is probably the best 40k ever was in terms of fluff<->rules relation.
4th or 5th core rules were both good and everything from that era should easily be (backwards) compatible.
Go with 3rd or 4th edition, whichever is available for the faction. With notable exception being CSM, which should use 3.5 and Dark Angels which should either just use SM 4th or stay with their 3rd codex supplement.
2nd ed, with heavy terrain and the GT tourney mods GW brought in (limits on characters, VP scoring, no level 3 psychic powers, no silly wargear cards etc.). Still bonkers, but with all the space on the table and enough terrain to allow movement and a decent set of narrative objectives it worked well.
Necrons: 3e or 5e (player's choice depending on whether they want the nostalgia oldcron vibes or most of the newcron units)
Tau: Probably 4e
Daemons: Looks like 4e is the only book in this range? Unless they can be fully run out of the 3.5e CSM book.
Ones I'm curious on:
Orks: 3e or 4e? I played a TON with the 4e book over the years but never played with the 3e book because i started in late 4th. Do people have a fondness for the 3e book? Giving it a cursory look thru it doesnt seem crazy fun/thematic like the 3.5e books do.
Nids: 3e, 4e, or 5e. I know there are some *very hated* nid books so I would like to know: Is there one you guys actually LIKED?
Space Marines: Similar question, all I recall is that the 5e book was wildly disliked (mainly due to 5e Space Wolves being Marines But Better For Free) and a TON of marine players in 5e ran "Blue and Gold Space Wolves". So, is the 4th ed book more interesting?
Automatically Appended Next Post: I understand people have very fond memories for 2nd in general, and it very often comes highly recommended.
We are currently playing quite a bit of 2nd ed. The charm is very much wearing off primarily down to how absolutely nutty every single heavy weapon is. In theory, yes, tank turrets can get blown off and careen out of control and all that fun stuff.
In practice, we're finding, 1 terminator lets 'er rip with an assault cannon and just one-shots a dreadnought no problem.
Similarly, khorne daemons are a problem. They are just the very essence of not fun to play against at all.
Yeah, the dirty secret about all the old editions is that there is a lot of jank, and some fo it is pretty unavoidable.
2nd Edition is wildly unbalanced, and so you either need to acept that or play a very stripped down version.
3rd edition is really three different editions. you had core 3rd with just the big black book army lists, you had core 3rd with the codexes, and then you had the trial vehicle/trial assault rules with the codexes plus the late 3rd (3.5) era codexes. Either go pure core rulebook, or use every rule ever written for 3rd. Even then it's a bit wonky, assault is VERY strong, and there isn't a ton of flavor until the 3.5 codexes.
4th edition had a couple of bonkers codexes (Nidzill and codex assault cannon) and the most punishing rules for transports. was the only edition to try to allow for unit heights with terrain.
5th edition veered back to vehicles being too good, and if you had a 4th editoin codex they were often too cheap. Rules allocation allowed for SHENANIGANS. Codex creep was real, with Gaurd, Wolves, and Grey kinghts becoming increasingly bonkers good.
6th/7th editions were messes for well documented reasons. Balance, ease of play, coherent looking armies: not required.
I think that with the right group, a late 3rd edition campaign could be a lot of fun. There was a lot of content available which you could splash in.
My super secret opinion: most of the time, the dopamine hit you want from playing an older edition could be captured with a homebrew set of Crusage rules.
Having been an ORK player since 1st edition, anything after 2nd was a stripped down and dull comparison to the army’s old glory. 3rd butchered ORKS so badly they are still recovering today 7 editions later. Overnight ORKS became one dimensional and boring as hell.
Space Marines are actually an awkward problem; I loved the 4e book's organization and structure, but there were also spots where pricing didn't make a lot of sense, and I do think if you're going to allow the 5e Space Wolf book you'll still have the "wait, why am I taking normal SM when the SW book is just better?" problem (e.g. paying 50pts instead of 35pts for the exact same Rhino). I don't have a comprehensive list handy for you, oldhammer has fallen by the wayside a bit in favor of Heresy for me, but I do think there are points tweaks you could make to the 4e SM books (regular, BT, DA) to make them line up better with the 5e stuff.
Also I have thoughts on flyers I don't have time to share right now; will write down specifics later, but the short version is that the 3e FW/4e Apocalypse version was actually really cool and let them be an interesting thing that the 5e flyers-as-skimmers and 6e invincible tanks version completely lost; I know plenty of people would prefer to forget flyers existed, but I think there's room for them, even in the smaller scale of older editions.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Polonius wrote: ...5th edition veered back to vehicles being too good, and if you had a 4th editoin codex they were often too cheap...
Other way 'round, 5e vehicles were better and 5e Codexes often included big price drops for vehicles over their 4e counterparts.
In my local group we usually do retrohammer with 5th Ed core rules and 3rd-4th codices.
5th Ed has solid core rules once you place a large stick on the table and make it clear that anyone who pulls wound allocation shenanigans will be beaten with it.
But not using 5th Ed codices avoids the creep and escalation in scale that defines that era.
For my enjoyment levels, i should keep in kind 2nd Ed came and went pre-internet. So I was only exposed to a tiny sliver of the community. And we were all on pretty much the same “fun is king” wavelength.
Come 3rd Ed? I was on Portent. And that’s when I discovered the WAAC crowd, the polar opposite of the community I originally came up with.
Seeing people focus solely on Beardy Armies and how to best abuse rules punched a lot of the fun out of it for me, especially once that approach started manifesting in my local store.
It started to feel like something I did solely for fun was being taken far too seriously, despite the distinct lack of stakes involved. Genuine example? Being told that unless I attended a hypothetical game, with my army math hammered and Netlisted to buggery, and prepared to bend the rules to breaking point to? I was “disrespecting my opponent”.
I was pretty young at the time (18), so wasn’t particularly mature. So to add to Fun Sponges online, I myself became a Fun Extractor, as I spent far, far too much time online in utterly pointless arguments over who was doing what wrong. Over the years I worked for GW a few times, and eventually encountered a young crowd who demanded every game follow their preferred tournament house rules, because “every game is tournament practice”. Now, between themselves? They booked the table, they can knock themselves out. But for more random match ups? That demand became ever more frustrating. And when I’d thrash them with my Unusual “this shouldn’t work, but boy does it!” Lists? Such sore losers. Apparently I only ever “diced them”, with no regard to the fact I knew my armies inside out, especially their weaknesses, and so could really work my ticket. My themes usually left glaring deficiencies, which I knew how to cover, or at least best mitigate, whilst also squeezing the most out of what was strong in my list.
That competitive mindset is of course fine. Not my taste, but not my business when it’s someone else’s hobby. But married to such poor sportsmanship, it really used to irk me, to the point I just didn’t want to play against them.
Come 2010, life really kicked into gear (homeless for a year, then working in different towns up and down the country, before finally settling into my current career which involved length weekday commutes) and I lost all real contact with the reality of the game, because I just never had the time or opportunity to play.
Hence, 2nd Ed has a lot of rose tinting to it, even before the Baby and Bathwater approach of 3rd, which was admittedly slowly undone over subsequent editions.
I'm certainly not trying to tell you that you didn't have a good time, but one thing that people (myself included) do is to look back at being young and playing games with friends and decided that what made it special was the specific rule set used, and not being young and playing with friends.
If you have a good group of friends, you can have a great time playing anything.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
catbarf wrote: In my local group we usually do retrohammer with 5th Ed core rules and 3rd-4th codices.
5th Ed has solid core rules once you place a large stick on the table and make it clear that anyone who pulls wound allocation shenanigans will be beaten with it.
But not using 5th Ed codices avoids the creep and escalation in scale that defines that era.
Probably not a terrible idea, especially since with the prices of vehicles in 3.5 they work pretty well with 5th edition vehicle rules.
Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote: That thread comes around regularly and I feel that most of the time, looks like overall 4th and 5th edition come up in the first places.
Generally true.
One problem when talking about prior editions is nostalgia glasses and if any of the pros/cons are dealbreaers.
I, for example, prefer abstract LoS, so favor the earlier editions. 5th, while a pretty tight ruleset, had some bad (IMHO) wound allocation rules the soured things.
Abstract Los and strong Assault rules is one thing causing me to lean towards 4e over 5e. One of the main points of dissatisfaction with our games of 2e is the extreme deadlines of shooting and the seeming inability of any melee army or units to work outside of the bananas fuckery of khorne.
The only draw of including any 5e content is the second issue we are running into: many people feeling left out as their armies don't really properly exist in 2e.
Even tau and dark Eldar are not included, and necrons are just 3 units. Orks, guard, Eldar and gsc are having great fun and one guy is goofing around with pirates using kharadron overlord and necromunda models. But the SMs are grumbling about how bad SMs suck and they can't win at all, and nobody has a good time playing the Daemon player because their rules are like bananas super necron melee monsters.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So the only desire to include any 5e codex content is just to get a couple more factions (drukhari and necrons) feeling "real".
The thing to note about the 3rd ed Ork book is that while the codex itself was an early one and pretty stripped down, Orks did get expansion army lists in the form of Feral Orks and Speed Freaks later in the edition. They wound up with a lot more potential variety during later 3rd ed and into 4th. Also Boyz were more expensive, but also more dangerous. Choppas were nasty.
The 4th ed Marine codex is, IMO, the best they ever made from a customization and unit roster standpoint. The custom chapter rules were great, and it was pre Sternguard-combiweapon-spam wonkiness. You could also pepper Veteran abilities around, which was nice. The real reason to choose the 5th ed book was that SMs got Frag, Krak, and Bolt Pistols as default wargear again, and Combat Squads was reintroduced. My ideal would be so mash those books together.
Regarding nids you probably want the 4th ed codex, it's awesome in the customisability you get. I had fun with the third ed one too, though it was a bit more restricted. I still haven't forgiven cruddace for the 5th ed dex.
the_scotsman wrote: Abstract Los and strong Assault rules is one thing causing me to lean towards 4e over 5e. One of the main points of dissatisfaction with our games of 2e is the extreme deadlines of shooting and the seeming inability of any melee army or units to work outside of the bananas fuckery of khorne.
I hate to say it, but this sorta reads like a "need more terrain" moment. If there's more Hard Cover (giving that -2 to hit), the Space Marine Ballistic Skill (and Targeters on Heavy Weapons) starts to kick in and have a big effect on the outcomes of firefights. When Guardians are only hitting on 6s and Marines are hitting on 5s with Bolters and 4s with their Heavy Bolters, the tables turn around real quick. And if there's more LOS blocking terrain, not only will assault armies will have an easier time, but the Grenades that every Marine comes with will start to come more into play.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, I think the options for Looted Vehicles were much better for Orks in their 3rd ed book.
OP, to be fair, if you pick any 3 to 7th edition you can quote happily pit any codex of the era against one another.
I do it quite often, latest example being playing codex catachan versus count-as-ed GSC IN 6th.
You only need a couple of adjustments, mostly applying the latest point cost for a mini (usually everything is cheaper the further towards 7th you go, so try to use these points costs so everyone is more or less on par). Few adjustments to special rules when they do not exist in that edition (usually fairly easy, just use whatever special rule is closest in your edition or make up one for the case.).
If you go to "post pic of the last game you played", you'll see that reading the like of "5th guard Vs 3rd Orks, 4th edition" is quite common.
The 2nd Ed Period was arguably WD’s heyday. It had decent battle reports, hobby articles and more often than not new rules for WHFB, 40K and/or Epic.
Whilst undeniably still a fancy catalogue, it just didn’t quite serve the same purpose after 2nd Ed 40K and Epic were wrapped up.
3rd was also a solid era for WD. Still new rules, fleshing out the fluff that was not included in the slim codexes, battle reports, tale of 4 gamers. Lots of great stuff.
I’d have to check when I stopped collecting, but know I’ve got all the WDs from late 2nd to into 4th at the very least.
the_scotsman wrote: Abstract Los and strong Assault rules is one thing causing me to lean towards 4e over 5e. One of the main points of dissatisfaction with our games of 2e is the extreme deadlines of shooting and the seeming inability of any melee army or units to work outside of the bananas fuckery of khorne.
The only draw of including any 5e content is the second issue we are running into: many people feeling left out as their armies don't really properly exist in 2e.
Even tau and dark Eldar are not included, and necrons are just 3 units. Orks, guard, Eldar and gsc are having great fun and one guy is goofing around with pirates using kharadron overlord and necromunda models. But the SMs are grumbling about how bad SMs suck and they can't win at all, and nobody has a good time playing the Daemon player because their rules are like bananas super necron melee monsters.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So the only desire to include any 5e codex content is just to get a couple more factions (drukhari and necrons) feeling "real".
I'm no grognard, but I've been getting my play-group to do 3rd with me, and from what I've collected, the only modern 40k armies without rules is Knights, Custodes, and Admech. Oh and votaan I guess, though all could easily be counts-as other factions (Daemonhunters, Elite Guard/Sisters), besides knights. Knights you could probably just use the vehicle design rules for and run them in one of the other lists.
3rd I never liked because it’s Assault Rules were just too good. Sweeping Advance or Follow Up from fight to fight. Blood Angels being into combat super quickly. And unlike shooting, you get to break faces twice a game turn, every game turn.
Also, that was when certain armies started to have one or two really effective lists, with everything else being naff.
Consider Eldar. They’re often misconstrued as often having overpowered Codexes. But that’s not quite the truth. Every Eldar codex has absolutely had horrific lists that could be made. And they cropped up quite often. Except…that was because everything else was crap.
Aspect Warriors in particular really suffered. In 1st and 2nd, they were fragile as Eldar usually are, but hit like an absolute tonne of bricks. 3rd Ed? Not so much a Glass Hammer, as a Non-Newtonian Physics Hammer Except When It Hit You It Bounced Off Then Shattered. Add in typically small unit sizes at a time when Orks and Nids were getting Proper Hordey in squad and scope, and you’ve got a recipe for utter disaster.
And that’s before we discuss the utter, utter nonsense of making the Shuriken Catapult 12” range, all but guaranteeing one probably, on balance, compared to any other small arm, semi-decent round of shooting, before your opponent kicked your teeth down your delicate throat.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: . Space Marine Chief Librarian in Terminator Armour, on Combat Drugs and with Iron Man just absolutely butchering anything that came near him.
.
I remember time when guy came with all maxed marine character. I shot unit he was and then tied him in melee killing rest of game unit of 10 as i didn't allow him more than 1-2 model per turn max kills.
And that’s before we discuss the utter, utter nonsense of making the Shuriken Catapult 12” range, all but guaranteeing one probably, on balance, compared to any other small arm, semi-decent round of shooting, before your opponent kicked your teeth down your delicate throat.
I will defend the 12" Catapult because of it's context next to the other Rapid Fire weapons, especially in 3rd ed, because in 3rd ed a Bolter could move and fire once, and you could not Assault. The Catapult being able to be fired twice, and then Assault afterwards, created an incredible differentiation between how those troops could operate. That meaningful differentiation just degraded so heavily over time as Rapid Fire weapons became easier to shoot on the move, and Marines were given pistols. The 12" Catapult made some sense within the 3rd ed paradigm, but by 5th ed it should have been pushed to 18".
I'd argue that the real problem was that certain units, looking at you Blood Angels, would be assaulting from well beyond 12". When models are successfully charging you from beyond your basic weapons ranges that sucks.
You could assault, that’s true. But assaulting anything with Guardians was hardly a solid tactic. WS3, S3, A1 didn’t do an awful lot of damage after all.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: You could assault, that’s true. But assaulting anything with Guardians was hardly a solid tactic. WS3, S3, A1 didn’t do an awful lot of damage after all.
True . . . but Guardians would get 4 attacks each in their total maneuver. 2 From the Catapult, then 2 again in the Assault (+1 from the charge). If Marines made an Assault they got 2 on the charge. . . and that was it. Plus I think the idea is that you'd rarely be charging in alone anyways. You'd ideally be using the Guardians in support of an Aspect charge or something. But also just think about how effective against Guardsmen that is, too! Your eldar basic troops could tear it up against GEQ types.
I just think that the small-unit maneuvering game of the 3rd ed era was super strong. The 12" Catapult was part of that. But yeah, if you think about it, on the move Marines can only shoot at pistol range, right? It's kind of a strange paradigm.
But yes, I will completely agree that it was a huge and jarring shift away from 2nd edition, and I do miss those Guardians firing Shuriken Catapults at 24" while sitting behind patches of lichen.
Regarding 2e, the issue is that Marines and 2e overall is a completely different wargame than you're likely used to, because tactical modifiers are so important. You noted lasguns have -1 AP, so yes, Space Marine lists without terminators will get torn to pieces by guardsmen in a direct shooting match. That's why you don't fight fair, you fight dirty. If you pay attention to their rules Space Marines have autosenses which allows them to completely ignore the effects of smoke grenades. The play style of 2e space marines, barring characters with void grenade antics, is to be a whole lot more tactical and precise than later editions. You don't just form a gunline and shred the enemy in a shooting match. You take cover, you pop smoke religiously so most enemies can't see anything while your units can gun them down easily. You mention melee is a joke and that's correct, Marines being melee happy was an evolution of 40k over time indulging in being more and more self referential. Marines circa 1e and 2e still are Marines, not knights.
To me the best old edition is probably a stitched together version of 4th and 5th. For example 5th fixed the issues vehicles had in 4th, but then overcorrected by also buffing them in the codices with reduced points costs etc. Off the top of my head a Chimera in the 3.5 dex was 90-100 points once you picked your guns, while in 5th it was....55? 65? The combination of them deciding to fix vehicles both in core rules AND pricepoints just overdid it a little bit.
The plus side is, since all these editions are related, you can used the books from 3rd-7th just fine, you will need to tweak things however - some bits are easy like remove hull points or look at the usr a model has and translate it into what that rule would be for the current edition. The harder bit is unit prices as in general points per models were higher the farther back you go, so using the skitaari/admech or genestealer cults from 7th you will probably need to within your playgroup play with their points costs in order to make it fun for everyone.
Wyzilla wrote: Regarding 2e, the issue is that Marines and 2e overall is a completely different wargame than you're likely used to, because tactical modifiers are so important. You noted lasguns have -1 AP, so yes, Space Marine lists without terminators will get torn to pieces by guardsmen in a direct shooting match. That's why you don't fight fair, you fight dirty. If you pay attention to their rules Space Marines have autosenses which allows them to completely ignore the effects of smoke grenades. The play style of 2e space marines, barring characters with void grenade antics, is to be a whole lot more tactical and precise than later editions. You don't just form a gunline and shred the enemy in a shooting match. You take cover, you pop smoke religiously so most enemies can't see anything while your units can gun them down easily. You mention melee is a joke and that's correct, Marines being melee happy was an evolution of 40k over time indulging in being more and more self referential. Marines circa 1e and 2e still are Marines, not knights.
I’d argue combat was effective, but only if you were of above strictly average stats. Which Marines were.
Also, if I wound up within 10” of an enemy unit with my Dark Angels? Get the grenades out, ‘Arold. Pelting units with Frags, or big nasties with Krak, was usually a solid plan. Just spam them with wounds (Frag) or with harder hitting shots (Krak) and your Tactical squad could do a lot of damage.
Assault Marines were an odd fish. Tooled up, with that points premium, they could mob and butcher a surprising number of things.
Terminators of course were absolutely murderous in 2nd, and Marine Dreadnoughts were filthy.
Solid base accuracy was also an important part of playing Marines right, as even in hard cover, with nowt else in play, you were still hitting on a 5+. Predators were horrific in either configuration against their appropriate target. The Whirlwind was also a laugh as you could drive it around at top speed, didn’t need LoS, and blow stuff up.
You just had to make use of cover. Yes, massed Lasguns were surprisingly deadly thanks to the -1 Save. But in Hard Cover? Most Guard were hitting on a 6, wounding on a 5+, and had to get past my 4+ save. In fact…a huge chunk of most enemy infantry would be hitting on a 6+, which covered me for all number of sins. Expect of course being caught in the open where I’d bloody well earned that kicking!
You could also pull shenanigans, like popping Scouts out into the open, where your opponent had to follow targeting rules, which typically meant “I think you’ll have to shoot the kiddos first, sport!”
The sheer abundance of Save Modifiers meant that the much-vaunted Power Armour of the Space Marines basically meant nothing in 2nd Ed.
3rd Ed hits with its new AP system, and suddenly Marines are taking saves on a full 3+ (or not taking them at all). It was the single most striking change, to me at least, when the editions changed over.
I know there are a lot of criticisms of the 3rd-7th AP system, but Marines being able to actually use their armour was a big deal.
3rd also had a lot less AP2 then later editions. Yes, there was some, but not at the levels we saw in 5th+. So marines didn’t need to hug cover for dear life as much. They could walk across the battlefield, small arms pinging off their PA.
Made them feel as tanky as the lore had them.
Plasma and starcannons came out, you still hugged the treeline though…
A lot of great stuff has been written by MDG above so I won't repeat it, but I think if you try and play 2nd edition with modern armies and sensibilities (and to an extent terrain) then you won't get very far with it.
For starters, if you have a look at battle reports from the 2nd ed. era the tables were *packed* with terrain. Also using smaller points values (1500 or even 1000) meant that manoeuvre tactics really came into play with flanking, surprise ambushes and the like. And this is where marines were effective, because even though their armour was more vulnerable, you could use application of force on an area of the enemy force; yes 20 guardsmen armed with lasguns (or more commonly gretchin with autoguns!) could outshoot you in an open field, but in practice that never happened with the terrain, and the fact the marines have jumped out of a rhino or razorback and outflanked them.
There were also a bunch of other bonuses that they got which aren't directly reflected in the stat-lines: autosenses, immunity to gas or choke grenades, the fact that all hold grenades and have a knife (no improvised -1 weapon attacks!) meant they were all-round very useful.
I will say my friends and I used to complain marines were *too* powerful in that edition, they were very hard to beat convincingly and it was common for people to be able to wrestle back a draw or narrow defeat even when they had played poorly. At least until Tyranids came along, and I will be honest GW what the hell were you thinking with that codex and making the game a misery for everyone else
So if you are going to play 2nd do 'when in Rome..' play with a force, a tabletop and a mentality appropriate to the toolbox the game gives you. Yes you can be a massive arsehat and come up with some truly horrendous lists (wolfguard terminators with cyclone missile launchers and assault cannons being a classic) but if someone does that, do as we did 25 years ago, laugh at them and tell them to piss off and pick a sensible army
I think off and pick a sensible army
I think 3rd was such a radical departure, but closer really to the modern editions in that the game switched from squad to platoon level combat, and you had a much more abstract experience, necessary because there were so many more miniatures on the tabletop.
The sheer abundance of Save Modifiers meant that the much-vaunted Power Armour of the Space Marines basically meant nothing in 2nd Ed.
3rd Ed hits with its new AP system, and suddenly Marines are taking saves on a full 3+ (or not taking them at all). It was the single most striking change, to me at least, when the editions changed over.
I know there are a lot of criticisms of the 3rd-7th AP system, but Marines being able to actually use their armour was a big deal.
I can see where you’re coming from, and I kind of agree. The AP system could’ve worked, but it wasn’t that well implemented.
The Autocannon is kind of a go-to example of a naff gun. S7 meant it struggled against tanks. AP4 meant it did little to heavy infantry. Heavy 2 meant it didn’t do enough to light and medium infantry. And it’s far from the only “wait, what is exactly is this for?” Weapons, which lead to stuff like Las/Plas/Pie Plate spam.
The Autocannon is kind of a go-to example of a naff gun. S7 meant it struggled against tanks. AP4 meant it did little to heavy infantry. Heavy 2 meant it didn’t do enough to light and medium infantry. And it’s far from the only “wait, what is exactly is this for?” Weapons, which lead to stuff like Las/Plas/Pie Plate spam.
I'm going to invoke an ancient horror here, but Autocannons were for light vehicles. They glanced AV10 on a 3+, and AV11 on a 4+. Since a lot of light vehicles were skimmers or had smoke, getting more shots was way better than being more likely to penetrate.
But yes, aside from that fairly specific target, it was pretty terrible against anything else.
You will never find that holy grail edition because gw was never interested in making a 'complete' game, only in giving you enough stuff to keep your interest for an edition cycle before they did something new.
The only reason 3rd-5th ed gave the appearance of improving was because they were focused on Lord of the rings and stayed with the core ruleset for far longer without any fundamental changes that affected codexes (like ap on melee weapons).
This is why you see so many people trying to Frankenstein themselves a version from all the previous ones using the best mechanics, because they were all deficient to some degree.
And then you end up in an endless cycle of basically rewriting 40k as a fan edition and never finishing or getting anywhere...
You can do the same thing to 2nd ed as well, but it's still just a fan edition. It was more complete than other editions though.
Here's some 2nd ed changes that make it easier to play and reduce some of the issues.
Reduce all asm by 1 (so save mod -1 becomes 0).
Make asm only begin at s5 (5 -1, 6 -2, 7 -3 etc).
Halve and round down all damage values to one of 3 damage options:
1
1d3
1d6
You will find things normalise a bit.
When rolling to penetrate vehicles, you only succeed if you roll higher than the armour and the effect is determined by how far past it you get (ie armour 20 and you roll 23, then the 3 result on the damage table is used).
Alternatively, ignore the normal penetration rules entirely and simplify by halving all vehicle armour rounding down and roll 1d6+str to determine if you penetrate again using the amount you exceed as your damage result (ie armour 9 vs 7+1d6=12 means you get the 3 result on the damage table).
Throw out melee resolution, and just use the 3rd ed ws vs ws chart and use initiative to determine who makes attacks first. Get +1i on the charge.
Like I said you'll chase your tail, and will still end up house ruling things.
The 2003 necromunda edition streamlined 2nd and removed weird dice, turning everything into a d6 or d3. The melee rules stayed which is fine in a small game like that, but terrible in squad v squad.
This is why you see so many people trying to Frankenstein themselves a version from all the previous ones using the best mechanics, because they were all deficient to some degree.
And then you end up in an endless cycle of basically rewriting 40k as a fan edition and never finishing or getting anywhere..
This.
Hence why, although no edition will be perfect, I totally share the wish to find the "best" one, because we won't have that much gaming time on our hands for the most of us and probably'd like to enjoy ourselves instead of fixing stuff.
There are some people who are really into making custom rules though. Dakkanaut easy E for example has made up his BFG sea based spin off IIRC, and the dedicated section of this forum proposes a lot of things.
It’s always been that way. As ever that’s not an excuse or a justification. Just a statement of fact and why others like myself have never particularly minded. It’s just, always been part of the overall experience.
I think that a reasonable rule for Autocannons in 3rd-7th would be:
High Impact [1] When making an armor save against this weapon, subtract 1 from the save roll.
So Terminators save on a 3+, Marines on a 4+, and Scouts get nada because AP4.
Yes, that's just 8th onwards AP, but I don't think having some weapons get it is the end of the world, even if I prefer the binary saves of 3rd-7th.
JNAProductions wrote: I think that a reasonable rule for Autocannons in 3rd-7th would be:
High Impact [1] When making an armor save against this weapon, subtract 1 from the save roll.
So Terminators save on a 3+, Marines on a 4+, and Scouts get nada because AP4.
Yes, that's just 8th onwards AP, but I don't think having some weapons get it is the end of the world, even if I prefer the binary saves of 3rd-7th.
And stepping outside the binary off/on of AP wasn’t unprecedented. IIRC choppas didn’t let you get more then a 4+ save.
JNAProductions wrote: I think that a reasonable rule for Autocannons in 3rd-7th would be:
High Impact [1] When making an armor save against this weapon, subtract 1 from the save roll.
So Terminators save on a 3+, Marines on a 4+, and Scouts get nada because AP4.
Yes, that's just 8th onwards AP, but I don't think having some weapons get it is the end of the world, even if I prefer the binary saves of 3rd-7th.
And stepping outside the binary off/on of AP wasn’t unprecedented. IIRC choppas didn’t let you get more then a 4+ save.
That's a weird one, since it triples damage against Terminators, +50% against MEQ, and does nothing for Scouts or lighter armor.
But yeah, it was a thing, I think.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The Autocannon is kind of a go-to example of a naff gun. S7 meant it struggled against tanks. AP4 meant it did little to heavy infantry. Heavy 2 meant it didn’t do enough to light and medium infantry. And it’s far from the only “wait, what is exactly is this for?” Weapons, which lead to stuff like Las/Plas/Pie Plate spam.
Autocannons were the bread and butter of the Guard.
Could take out everything up to and including AV13. Wounded almost all infantry in a 2+. Fired 2 shots a turn, which on a 50/50 Ballistic Skill meant you were hitting each turn, and were great for taking out those incoming rushing Rhinos (and then Autocannon Havocs with Tank Hunters? Oh boy they were fun!).
Now, to be fair, I see your point about a high strength weapon with AP4. And, it is true, when we did our own homebrew rules, one of the first things I introduced was the concept of "High Impact", which was a -1 Save Modifier that some weapons got, and everything S8 and above got. It meant that AP3 Krak Missiles caused Terminators to save on a 3+, and Autocannons (which were given the High Impact rule for this exact reason) made Marines save on a 4+. Not completely ignoring their armour, but showing that this powerful light cannon was more likely to get through than a Guardman's Lasgun or a Guardian's knife.
EDIT: I see JNA had the same idea.
And Choppas were stupid, reducing Terminator armour but doing nothing to a Guardsmen. Funnily enough, we gave Choppas "High Impact" in our rules, rather than their strange non-scaling rules. In fact, all "Heavy Close Combat Weaons" got High Impact.
I remember 2nd ed. GSC- mostly ripping things to pieces with purestrains- if I remember correctly, we got an extra die for vehicle armour pen or some such thing that gave a purestrain a decent chance to rip into a tank- often sacrificially blowing up its own unit.
The Witch Hunter dex, while fantastic, lacks a lot of the units I love. I really like Mortifiers, Zephyrim, Sacressants. While I only use named characters in very specific games, Morvenn is really, really important to Sisters as a part of the narrative- she is the sole Abbess governing both Prioris and Sanctorum and she's a High Lord of Terra on top of that. I even like the Paragons and the Castigator.
And as good as the Witch Hunter dex was, I just don't want to house rule or count as so many of the units that I've come to appreciate.
Note: The second ed Sisters dex was pretty cool with a lot of extra characters, but since I was content with GSC, I didn't really go all in on Sisters until 3rd.
RE: White Dwarf heyday
I'm going to defend 8th-9th era WD. The Torchbearer Crusade rules are probably my favourite set of WD rules of all time. The 4 issues of support for Wars of Faith in Crusade were also really well done, and they provided a wealth of additional support for 9th's Nachmund campaign.
And while wargear options on datacards may not support conversion work, white Dwarf certainly does- their gallery of Fallen themed miniatures was awesome and they made really good use of AoS Slaanesh to glam up more than a few 40k units- including, if a remember correctly, a titan with a noise marine band on its back and another with the AoS endless spell Deamon face as a head. There was also an amazing deathwatch army full of custom modelling.
And there was a lot of good content in Flashpoint articles eve if some of them were a little flat.
The jury's still out on WD in 10th. Today's issue will be the first with 10th ed Crusade content, and I'm not as impressed with the Bunker content as I expected to be- so far there's a lot of emphasis on Combat Patrol. There is potential, and we're early in the edition.
Even though I don't play any Marines besides the Chambers Militant of the Inquisition, I am looking quite forward to seeing the Tome Keepers bespoke content for the insight about what we can expect in terms of bespoke subfaction Crusade content for the remainder of the edition. Like of the Tau dex is devoid of Crusade content that adequately supports alien auxilia broadly and Kroot more specifically, that would be a perfect place for WD to step up.
Or give us some really good Imperial Agent/ Inquisition content. I really liked the Ashes of Faith campaign system, and I'd love to see it adapted for 40k- WD would be well suited to that task too.
So in the great tradition of chasing a 'complete and perfect' edition, I've gone and done that thing I said people do - creating a modified version of an edition. This time though, it's 2nd ed (using the latest version of the existing battle bible), tweaking the rules but keeping it mostly the same (except Melee - that had to go in the bin).
Vehicles and armour penetration has changed a bit, as each location's damage table is now a 'wound' table, and each penetrating hit causes the effect and knocks that wound off, so you have to keep penetrating to destroy it (or score a crit and increase the damage).
ASM are reduced by 1 across the board and all damage has been halved, then rounded down to either D6, D3 or 1.
The fun damage results in 2nd Ed were one of the things I loved the most.
When I wrote the vehicle rules for the 40kRPGs, I went out of my way to include things from those charts in the game. Especially the "vehicle flips over" result, which was my fav one.
Lol at the CC getting tossed out. It was . . . Slow going. I'll have to see what it was replaced with.
Automatically Appended Next Post: All damage halved. . . That's a big shift.
I liked the CC rules at necromunda scale as they felt like a duel, but trying to run 20 duels a turn is pretty tiring in 40k. These rules are the 3rd to hit table combined with modifiers for WS and I for hits, with criticals and a different sequence.
The damage stat was mostly used for vehicle penetration, as nothing except Nurgle Daemon prince had more than 10 wounds making the damage as, if not more, dangerous to monsters as the penetration rules were to vehicles.
the_scotsman wrote: What are your thoughts? How do you feel about the various books your faction got between 3-5? Were any of them "The Book"? Are the 3rd ed books universally more fun and we should just use 3e books with 4e rules?
GW seemed to change their design philosphy about three times every edition, and as some(most) factions missed entire editions at a time the best way to get a fun balance is always going to be a degree of tweaking and agreements to not be 'that guy'.
'That guy' is also circumstantial. Going full-on competitive options with the 4e eldar codex under 5e rules against top 5e books is very different from doing it under 4th edition rules and older books. Similarly a lot of mid-ish 3rd edition books were packed with options that could be abusive (eldar shooting you off the board before the game starts, chaos fielding literally indestructible units, etc), but the other 90% of those books were mostly fine.
It's something you can only really figure out as you go along depending on your group and the kinds of lists you play. Quite a few factions jump from very limited to very powerful all at once with no 4e middle ground.
Very broadly speaking once you hit the 4th edition Chaos codex and onwards you start to get the cheaper vehicles and more free basic wargear (greandes, etc), peaking with some of the later marine variants in 5th. There is also a dip in customisability starting around about the same time in terms of being able to min-max units that made performance a little more predictable, but also a notable drop in points for specialist units particularly in the area of points 'tax' on high speed(bikes/jump packs), heavy weapons, etc.
3.5 Chaos codex is the greatest thing GW ever made.
We got the Tau and necrons in third. The army sets, plastic dread and landraider, lots of fun alternative lists like Guard Armored Companies, Alpha Legion cultist lists, all the flavors of Eldar and Chaos, all the flavors of marine...
Almost every kit GW was comparable with space marine kits and people actually came up with amazing lore and conversions and you almost never ever saw an army painted in codex colors.
4th was okay.
5th was bad.
6th didn't exist.
7th was awful.
8th happened I guess.
9th is the worst version of 40k.
10 was tolerable for a few weeks but it's starting to just be a mess again.
These days I play against one person who actually buys GW products and another who has printed himself a few dozen armies but has yet to actually play a game.
I don't really have any interest playing against other people. Most of my old opponents moved on well over a decade ago or moved away. I do not enjoy 40k in the same way as newer players do so I don't get involved.
I'm almost at the point of just giving up on the gaming side entirely. It hasn't been a rewarding experience since like 2010 for me.
Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.
3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.
That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.
But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.
As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.
3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.
That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.
But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.
As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.
You know, I feel you, that's pretty much also part of my reluctancy to jump any further than the edition I started with (while I don't mind going backwards). Even as a youngster both to the hobby (10 years is relatively new by this forum's metric i guess) and in general.
You came at a time for a hobby because it appealed to you. Then it changes. When you no longer feel the same vibe that made you like it, you rant about how it has derailed and how it's been all botched. Sometimes you're even annoyed at people because they like it and you're like that prick as you say "those kids don't know what this is actually all about".
The practical frustration with this however is quite simple and factual: when you lag behind in your prehistoric version of things, it'll get harder to find people to gather and have a game you actually enjoy -rules, atmosphere and lore-.
You're not the only prick in here
Edit: corrected my unsufferable butchering of english spelling that hurt even my french heart.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.
3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.
That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.
But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.
As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.
Fair enough. My only curiosity is your take on "rich background". The Index Astartes articles fleshed out the Legions more than ever before. We got the Craftworld Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Witch Hunters, Demon Hunters, Deathwatch, we had PDFs for the epicast titans, FW was kicking out cool stuff, Speed Freeks [lol autocorreced to Greeks], Armageddon, The Hive Fleet invasion (technically 4th but that's really a continuation of 3.5), white dwarf was adding new units (Mounted Demonettes, Rail Rifles, Kroot Armies, Armored Company) and so much more.
I felt the lore and background was more open for the players to make their own.
At Dakka we had a guy with a Chaos army that was a hockey team (including Zambonis on his transports), and don't get me started on the Vehicle Design Rules.
I will say that the tournament/competitive scene does seem to have really amped up around then. But I think that was mostly because the game was fairly balanced if you didn't have endless collections of models.
I felt the community was far more open and accepting in those days. However... It was mostly guys 30+ years old with a few kids under 12. I think I could count the number of teens my age on one hand. Oh man... And the one single time my girlfriend walked in was a nightmare (to be fair she new of the crowd and dressed to impress).
We had ladder campaigns and the store battle ladders. We had a very competitive scene but 99% of our games were not cut throat gaming. Mostly friendly pick up games that contributed to us all getting more than one game in a week. I practically lived in their lounge, getting in as many games as possible from around 1998 up until they closed and became Battlefield: Manchester (no windows, no parking, across from the park with the most homeless).
shortymcnostrill wrote: Regarding nids you probably want the 4th ed codex, it's awesome in the customisability you get. I had fun with the third ed one too, though it was a bit more restricted. I still haven't forgiven cruddace for the 5th ed dex.
Even 4th Ed has some issues, it pretty much was the Nidzilla codex as nothing else had the same degree of customization and potential for efficiency.
But also the core ruleset wasn't really designed with monsters in mind (lack of a Damage stat nor Damage tables, refusal to use the entire design space and in general basically simply being big infantry models).
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.
3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.
That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.
But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.
As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.
Fair enough. My only curiosity is your take on "rich background". The Index Astartes articles fleshed out the Legions more than ever before. We got the Craftworld Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Witch Hunters, Demon Hunters, Deathwatch, we had PDFs for the epicast titans, FW was kicking out cool stuff, Speed Freeks [lol autocorreced to Greeks], Armageddon, The Hive Fleet invasion (technically 4th but that's really a continuation of 3.5), white dwarf was adding new units (Mounted Demonettes, Rail Rifles, Kroot Armies, Armored Company) and so much more.
I felt the lore and background was more open for the players to make their own.
At Dakka we had a guy with a Chaos army that was a hockey team (including Zambonis on his transports), and don't get me started on the Vehicle Design Rules.
I will say that the tournament/competitive scene does seem to have really amped up around then. But I think that was mostly because the game was fairly balanced if you didn't have endless collections of models.
I felt the community was far more open and accepting in those days. However... It was mostly guys 30+ years old with a few kids under 12. I think I could count the number of teens my age on one hand. Oh man... And the one single time my girlfriend walked in was a nightmare (to be fair she new of the crowd and dressed to impress).
We had ladder campaigns and the store battle ladders. We had a very competitive scene but 99% of our games were not cut throat gaming. Mostly friendly pick up games that contributed to us all getting more than one game in a week. I practically lived in their lounge, getting in as many games as possible from around 1998 up until they closed and became Battlefield: Manchester (no windows, no parking, across from the park with the most homeless).
If you entered 40k with 3rd, you would not have any information on those factions. the 2nd ed codexes were on average 90 pages long, and each unit got its own write up, along with general faction history and great snippets of lore in outboxes.
I'm not sure if they ever mentioned the 3 moons of the eldar homeworld after the one outbox in the 2nd ed codex for example.
And, when they started writing proper books again, they were all basically just trimmed down versions of the original material, often losing the turn of phrase and evocative nature in the process.
And every book since then has basically just been a reprint of those 2nd ed codexes, and imo, never quite as good.
On 3rd and Tournaments? It coincided with The Interwebs really penetrating society. Chat rooms, ICQ, AOL, lol, ROFLcopters. All that really not as good as I remember it.
Which with the rise of message boards like Dakka and Portent, made it easier than ever for people to find tournaments and that. For relatively free. And so more competitors found out about more tournaments, which meant tournaments could grow, and people talked about them.
And probably like, a couple of dozen posters decided That Was Everything, which I disagreed with and hence the taint in my head.
But yeah. The Codexes being such anaemic affairs didn’t help.
2nd ed was peak codex. Packed to the top with background, short fiction, rules, art, pictures, minis, and yes rules.
As much as 3rd gets slammed for taking the axe to those, it did have a few good points. From a rules POV, they were no muss, no fuss, trim books. You didn’t need to spend time flipping around to find stuff (They were so thin because most of the non-rules was cut) As a game supplement they did what they needed to do. And did it affordably in an easy to pack volume. I own almost all the codexes from the era because they were so cheep. Something that would break the bank today.
The fluff was not lost either. If just mostly spun off into WD. There were tons of articles and spotlights delving into all sorts of things. Sure, it wasn’t a neat package all-in-one book that the 2nd ed ones were, but they could grow and more things could be added. In depth articles on chapters/legions/etc. When a new kit was released that unit got far more love lavished on it then a half-page entry it had in the old codex.
2nd and 3rd are the alpha and the omega of codex design. The hight of fluff and crunch respectively. Everything else tries to find a spot in the middle, but honestly falls short.
Nevelon wrote: 2nd ed was peak codex. Packed to the top with background, short fiction, rules, art, pictures, minis, and yes rules.
As much as 3rd gets slammed for taking the axe to those, it did have a few good points. From a rules POV, they were no muss, no fuss, trim books. You didn’t need to spend time flipping around to find stuff (They were so thin because most of the non-rules was cut) As a game supplement they did what they needed to do. And did it affordably in an easy to pack volume. I own almost all the codexes from the era because they were so cheep. Something that would break the bank today.
The fluff was not lost either. If just mostly spun off into WD. There were tons of articles and spotlights delving into all sorts of things. Sure, it wasn’t a neat package all-in-one book that the 2nd ed ones were, but they could grow and more things could be added. In depth articles on chapters/legions/etc. When a new kit was released that unit got far more love lavished on it then a half-page entry it had in the old codex.
2nd and 3rd are the alpha and the omega of codex design. The hight of fluff and crunch respectively. Everything else tries to find a spot in the middle, but honestly falls short.
If you were a marine player sure, but the xenos armies got very little in WD and nothing that was like what they got in 2nd ed.
3rd ed was GW's acceleration at oversaturating marines in the game, 10x the WD background material anyone else got.
Tyran wrote: But also the core ruleset wasn't really designed with monsters in mind (lack of a Damage stat nor Damage tables, refusal to use the entire design space and in general basically simply being big infantry models).
It was hit and miss. Monsters weren't prone to being instantly blown away at close range like vehicles (especially in combat) but were frequently statted to be on the statistically wrong side of a missile launcher salvo as heavy weapons got ever cheaper over time.
4e nidzilla benefited significantly from being able to push their fexes up to 2+ saves but also from a marine heavy environment - I recall the old distraction carnifex looking somewhat less imposing against the old 'I have more lances than you have models' dark eldar lists :p
Tyran wrote: But also the core ruleset wasn't really designed with monsters in mind (lack of a Damage stat nor Damage tables, refusal to use the entire design space and in general basically simply being big infantry models).
It was hit and miss. Monsters weren't prone to being instantly blown away at close range like vehicles (especially in combat) but were frequently statted to be on the statistically wrong side of a missile launcher salvo as heavy weapons got ever cheaper over time.
4e nidzilla benefited significantly from being able to push their fexes up to 2+ saves but also from a marine heavy environment - I recall the old distraction carnifex looking somewhat less imposing against the old 'I have more lances than you have models' dark eldar lists :p
Or IG veteran plasma spam while at it. Or GK force weapons. And of course DE could simply murder Tyranids with poison.
All of the above which in turn led to everyone else (but Tyranids) having monsters with 2+ armor saves, invulnerable saves and FNP+, which in turn lead to the grav nonsense (which in turn meant that the average 6th-7th ed Tactical squad could one shot a Carnifex).
Hence I'm not fond of OldHammer design when it cames to monsters.
Tyran wrote: Or IG veteran plasma spam while at it. Or GK force weapons. And of course DE could simply murder Tyranids with poison
Yes, neither the 4e nor 5e book were much defense against the top 5e codex factions, but then again not much was.
Against 3e daemonhunters with their singular force weapon per army or 3e guard with their non-troop veterans in their 85pt open topped chimera those monstrous creatures looked a whole lot better, especially when you could get two fexes for the cost of one minimum size mounted veteran squad...
Monsters in 3rd wouldn’t have been quite a bad if vehicles didn’t have such delicate stat lines.
I neither know nor care if it’s a particularly popular opinion, but moving vehicles to T and W was one of the best things GW ever did.
But in 3rd/4th? Dreadnoughts in particular were awful. Not only were their stats lowered, and weapons wussied. They had all the worst bits of Monsters (so, so slow), and Vehicles (incredibly fragile).
If a Carnifex got a Dreadnought in HTH? The Dreadnought would struggle, because just a single penetrating hit would be enough, whereas the Dread had to get every last wound off the Carnifex.
And if memory serves (it probably doesn’t) I wouldn’t bag VP’s for wounded Monsters?
I thought of a couple more magic moments from previous eds:
The introduction of Kill Team via the BRB in 5th I think?
This was pure magic, and an absolute breakthrough for GW. I would argue that all of the Kill Team specialist games, and even some of the other specialist games all came from that little mini-game, and it planted the seed for a lot of Crusade and escalation mechanics that came afterward.
Tim Huckleberry's GSC dex from the Citadel Journal- Damn I loved his Young Patriarch concept, and I miss it to this day. But the list as a whole was better than the 2e list from the Nid dex, and it would also be the only GSC dex for almost two decades. Tim, if you are out there, know that you are the favourite human brother of the Four Armed Emperor.
Also Citadel Journal- the Covert X Campaign. It was about the scout company of a marine chapter having a cryo accident and waking up on a corrupt Imperial Deathworld to find that they were the last of their chapter.
The corrupt governor used the Adeptus Arbites to exact his will, and the Covert X scouts had to find a way to reconnect with the Imperium, even if it meant toppling the Arbites to achieve the goal.
PenitentJake wrote: I thought of a couple more magic moments from previous eds:
The introduction of Kill Team via the BRB in 5th I think?
This was pure magic, and an absolute breakthrough for GW. I would argue that all of the Kill Team specialist games, and even some of the other specialist games all came from that little mini-game, and it planted the seed for a lot of Crusade and escalation mechanics that came afterward...
Kill Team in the core book was 4e; it didn't have any progression/escalation built into it, but there was a set of campaign rules in that rulebook that do look remarkably like Crusade as well.
(What, two separate mini-expansions/variants in the core rulebook instead of being spun off into a $50 expansion book? Were GWmad?)
Yeah, Kill Team was a skirmish style asymmetrical game designed like a dirty dozen style action movie, only 1 person played the Kill Team (the 5-10 characterful models) and the other played the Brute Squad (multiple small units of goons and a central villain).
The Brute Squad was only semi controlled and moved around on patrol until alerted.
Its the main system I used to make my Deathwatch space marine Necromunda variant for gaming conventions!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Monsters in 3rd wouldn’t have been quite a bad if vehicles didn’t have such delicate stat lines.
I neither know nor care if it’s a particularly popular opinion, but moving vehicles to T and W was one of the best things GW ever did.
But in 3rd/4th? Dreadnoughts in particular were awful. Not only were their stats lowered, and weapons wussied. They had all the worst bits of Monsters (so, so slow), and Vehicles (incredibly fragile).
If a Carnifex got a Dreadnought in HTH? The Dreadnought would struggle, because just a single penetrating hit would be enough, whereas the Dread had to get every last wound off the Carnifex.
And if memory serves (it probably doesn’t) I wouldn’t bag VP’s for wounded Monsters?
yeah tbh any time anyone says stuff like "Muh small arms shouldnt wound vehicles, vehicles used to be tougher, vehicles used to be this or that" I know that they either didnt actually play old editions, are misremembering old editions (because often old editions had fewer player turns that just took longer to resolve) or just played ultra ultra ultra casual old edition games where each side had like 2 heavy weapons total.
my every memory of vehicles in pre-8th eds was of delicate little fabrige eggs that shattered into powder at the slightest touch of anything approaching a heavy weapon. And I mainly played 5th! The peak of vehicle strength!
They were never tough. They were only ever ridiculously cheap (like 30-35pts for a basic transport in a lot of eds)
And for a while I thought 2nd was what people were thinking about "when tanks felt like tanks" and now having played 10 or so games of 2nd...noooo. noooooooooooooooooooooo. All those beautiful fun vehicle damage tables, and in all my games I've seen a fun interesting result on one that wasn't "Vehicle Dies" like...2 times.
my every memory of vehicles in pre-8th eds was of delicate little fabrige eggs that shattered into powder at the slightest touch of anything approaching a heavy weapon. And I mainly played 5th! The peak of vehicle strength!
They were never tough. They were only ever ridiculously cheap (like 30-35pts for a basic transport in a lot of eds)
They were tough in 5th. That's why we got hull points in 6th. In 5th a vehicle could take an infinite number of glancing hits that resulted in crew stunned, crew shaken results. It's why melta was king, getting penetrating hits with +1 on the damage table to get wrecked or explodes results on a 4+. We didn't have parking lots just because Razorbacks were cheap, it was also because they were resilient. In 6th autocannons and the like came back because now you could pop a transport with just 3 glances regardless of the actual damage results.
But there were other elements of the vehicle rules back then. Weapon arcs and vehicle facings made it so there were tactical options for flanking vehicles to get side and rear gaks for better damage potential. I think that's at least part of what people are thinking about when lamenting about vehicles just being monsters now.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.
3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.
That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.
But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.
As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.
Fair enough. My only curiosity is your take on "rich background". The Index Astartes articles fleshed out the Legions more than ever before. We got the Craftworld Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Witch Hunters, Demon Hunters, Deathwatch, we had PDFs for the epicast titans, FW was kicking out cool stuff, Speed Freeks [lol autocorreced to Greeks], Armageddon, The Hive Fleet invasion (technically 4th but that's really a continuation of 3.5), white dwarf was adding new units (Mounted Demonettes, Rail Rifles, Kroot Armies, Armored Company) and so much more.
I felt the lore and background was more open for the players to make their own.
At Dakka we had a guy with a Chaos army that was a hockey team (including Zambonis on his transports), and don't get me started on the Vehicle Design Rules.
I will say that the tournament/competitive scene does seem to have really amped up around then. But I think that was mostly because the game was fairly balanced if you didn't have endless collections of models.
I felt the community was far more open and accepting in those days. However... It was mostly guys 30+ years old with a few kids under 12. I think I could count the number of teens my age on one hand. Oh man... And the one single time my girlfriend walked in was a nightmare (to be fair she new of the crowd and dressed to impress).
We had ladder campaigns and the store battle ladders. We had a very competitive scene but 99% of our games were not cut throat gaming. Mostly friendly pick up games that contributed to us all getting more than one game in a week. I practically lived in their lounge, getting in as many games as possible from around 1998 up until they closed and became Battlefield: Manchester (no windows, no parking, across from the park with the most homeless).
ORKS are my go to example of how 3rd did armies dirty. They were gutted by the 3rd codex. 1st edition ORKS had near 500 pages of fluff and rules across three of the best books gw ever made (never mind the epic stuff), 2nd trimmed that but the background all stayed the same and relevant. 3rd edition came and it was all washed away and replaced with pamphlet of a codex with maybe a dozen pages of fluff total. It was a massacre. If that’s when you came to 40K then your knowledge of your faction was so limited. And like mad doc I am a whore for the fluff, I love the back ground. And 3rd killed that off for a long time, even all the add ins like eye of terror etc didn’t come close to just one factions back ground for more 3rd.
If you were a fan of space marines then yeah, 3rd ed was great for lore. They got multiple books published from WD articles about every minute difference between chapters that warranted 1000 soldiers getting their own army lists...
Hellebore wrote: If you were a fan of space marines then yeah, 3rd ed was great for lore. They got multiple books published from WD articles about every minute difference between chapters that warranted 1000 soldiers getting their own army lists...
If you weren't marines though, you got bugger all
That'd not quite fair, 3rd also saw the introduction of whole host of new armies. Necrons, Tau, Dark Eldar, Daemonhunters all became armies in that edition. Of those, the DE were underserved lore-wise with their early edition "pamphlet" codex, but the others were great on lore.
Those early 3rd ed books were tiny, but that 3.5 era was great.
Yeah it really just sounds like you're bitter about Marines getting tons of options in an edition where everyone got tons of options, and new races were introduced all over the place.
Guard and Chaos have never been as good as they were in 3rd, and they weren't your typical Marines (or Marines at all!).
Tbf, Hellebore was specifically talking about lore, since those early 3rd ed books were so slim (Especially compared to the 2nd ed ones). They did thicken up again in the years following though.
Introducing a new army does not equate to lots of lore for non marine armies.
Space wolves were my main army since 1994.
No one got lore books like marines did in that era, so the argument that it was great for lore is only true if you liked Marines.
No army got even close to their 2nd lore allotment until 4th and 5th when the books starting resembling 2nd ed codexes again. The 3.5 chaos, necrons and tau books were still only small in comparison to 2nd ed.
They literally stripped.it all out and then ignored everything that wasn't a marine
If the new armies came with lore, that seems like a lore drop.
IMO Marines got a bunch of lore because A: They were the popular faction. B: They had that early-ed slimbook. And C: GW actually had some restraint and didn't keep aggressively expanding their unit roster like they do now. They were a pretty simple army, with little-contemporary published lore, but crazy popular. It makes some sense.
But even then as a Marine player, I never actually bought any of the Index Astartes books as I was just running my own plainJane vanilla chapter.
IIrc, I think when those lore sections popped back into the 4th ed books many of them were copy-pasted from 2nd.
. . . .
But honestly, some of those bits in the early ed slimdex remain some of the best, anyways. There's something to be said about keeping it short but high quality, as opposed to the sprawling garbage of a Matt Ward codex.
Insectum7 wrote: There's something to be said about keeping it short but high quality, as opposed to the sprawling garbage of a Matt Ward codex.
The in-universe communiques, speculative genealogy, short fiction, dissection report, and Imperial propaganda in the 3rd Ed Tyranids codex painted a vivid picture that the subsequent codices jam-packed with dry recitations of in-universe history never lived up to.
I know that some people didn't like how little 'actual lore' was in those codices, but they conveyed the flavor of each faction in a way that later ones never recaptured.
Insectum7 wrote: There's something to be said about keeping it short but high quality, as opposed to the sprawling garbage of a Matt Ward codex.
The in-universe communiques, speculative genealogy, short fiction, dissection report, and Imperial propaganda in the 3rd Ed Tyranids codex painted a vivid picture that the subsequent codices jam-packed with dry recitations of in-universe history never lived up to.
I know that some people didn't like how little 'actual lore' was in those codices, but they conveyed the flavor of each faction in a way that later ones never recaptured.
Yeah it's not like an either/or situation though, just because gw decided it was didn't mean it had to be.
There is plenty of space for both in a book that is the main method of promotion and advertising for a whole product line.
Aspect Warriors, whilst pricey and fragile, tended to hit like an absolute ton of bricks.
Howling Banshees in particular were utter, utter filth if they could make combat. Even a single Banshee getting the charge could mess up an entire squad.
They got even better when the Falcon arrived, and Eldar finally got a Transport.
Likewise Warp Spiders, where the name of the game was getting those templates to overlap and watch your foe turn into soup.
3rd Ed? Well, the Aspects got no tougher. And they didn’t hit as hard, like at all. And much, much worse? Their foes became more numerous in terms of upper squad limit.
And frankly, they, kinda like Terminators, have never really reclaimed their particular niche of being deadly.
Aspect Warriors, whilst pricey and fragile, tended to hit like an absolute ton of bricks.
Howling Banshees in particular were utter, utter filth if they could make combat. Even a single Banshee getting the charge could mess up an entire squad.
They got even better when the Falcon arrived, and Eldar finally got a Transport.
Likewise Warp Spiders, where the name of the game was getting those templates to overlap and watch your foe turn into soup.
3rd Ed? Well, the Aspects got no tougher. And they didn’t hit as hard, like at all. And much, much worse? Their foes became more numerous in terms of upper squad limit.
And frankly, they, kinda like Terminators, have never really reclaimed their particular niche of being deadly.
Aspect warrior squads were things to be avoided as a regular opponent to eldar armies in 2nd. You tended to game plan to keep them away or kill them because if they in to do what they were designed to do they were game wreckers. It felt fluffy and right.
Same with genestealers, they were the best close combat unit in the game with stats to rival the best heroes, and small handful of those getting through to combat was a nightmare.
It became and game within the game. Later editions just felt like maths problems to be solved.
Insectum7 wrote:The thing to note about the 3rd ed Ork book is that while the codex itself was an early one and pretty stripped down, Orks did get expansion army lists in the form of Feral Orks and Speed Freaks later in the edition. They wound up with a lot more potential variety during later 3rd ed and into 4th. Also Boyz were more expensive, but also more dangerous. Choppas were nasty.
I'd argue that Orks had 9 distinct army lists by the end of 3rd edition with a lot of resulting flavour in list type:
Codex: Orks
The Speed freeks list
The feral Orks list
and the 6 Chapter Approved clan lists from WD 290 , which changed the core list as much as the 5 Craftworld lists in Codex: Craftworld Eldar.
You could build sneaky Ork armies, shooty armies, horde lists, elite melee... All kinds of stuff.
The 4th ed Marine codex is, IMO, the best they ever made from a customization and unit roster standpoint. The custom chapter rules were great, and it was pre Sternguard-combiweapon-spam wonkiness. You could also pepper Veteran abilities around, which was nice. The real reason to choose the 5th ed book was that SMs got Frag, Krak, and Bolt Pistols as default wargear again, and Combat Squads was reintroduced. My ideal would be so mash those books together.
Losing veteran abilities was a massive shame. It really made veterans feel like more than +1Ld and the option of Terminator Honours.
And that’s before we discuss the utter, utter nonsense of making the Shuriken Catapult 12” range, all but guaranteeing one probably, on balance, compared to any other small arm, semi-decent round of shooting, before your opponent kicked your teeth down your delicate throat.
I will defend the 12" Catapult because of it's context next to the other Rapid Fire weapons, especially in 3rd ed, because in 3rd ed a Bolter could move and fire once, and you could not Assault. The Catapult being able to be fired twice, and then Assault afterwards, created an incredible differentiation between how those troops could operate. That meaningful differentiation just degraded so heavily over time as Rapid Fire weapons became easier to shoot on the move, and Marines were given pistols. The 12" Catapult made some sense within the 3rd ed paradigm, but by 5th ed it should have been pushed to 18".
I'd argue that the real problem was that certain units, looking at you Blood Angels, would be assaulting from well beyond 12". When models are successfully charging you from beyond your basic weapons ranges that sucks.
The same is true of standard shotguns. By 5th edition, a shotgun was essentially strictly worse than a lasgun accept in the very niche circumstance of wanting to assault after shooting (rare for guardsmen) and didn't benefit from 1st rank fire! Second rank fire!. In 3rd edition, a shotgun could move and fire 2 shots at 12", whereas a lasgun could only fire 1 shot. It was more balanced in role.
Hellebore wrote:Introducing a new army does not equate to lots of lore for non marine armies.
Space wolves were my main army since 1994.
No one got lore books like marines did in that era, so the argument that it was great for lore is only true if you liked Marines.
No army got even close to their 2nd lore allotment until 4th and 5th when the books starting resembling 2nd ed codexes again. The 3.5 chaos, necrons and tau books were still only small in comparison to 2nd ed.
They literally stripped.it all out and then ignored everything that wasn't a marine
I'd argue Imperial Guard and maybe Chaos also got extensive lore offerings in that era, as much as Space Marines in the case of Guard. However, these were tilted towards Black Library and Forge World rather than White Dwarf (excepting the traitor legions in Index: Astartes).
The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer and Munitorum Manual were first published at this time, along with the 3rd War for Armageddon and 13th Black Crusade background books. The Sabbat Worlds Crusade background book being published in 2005 was just into 4th edition. Imperial Armour volume 1 greatly expanded lore on Imperial Guard vehicles.
There was also Xenology for some extra xenos spice.
Insectum7 wrote: ^ And +1 to the mention of Ork clan lists in WD 290. I'll have to find my copy and sticky-note it. Thanks!
For those with a Warhammer + subscription and without old copies of White Dwarf, WD290 is available in its entirety on the Warhammer Vault, including the full Chapter Approved rules.
Haighus wrote: I'd argue Imperial Guard and maybe Chaos also got extensive lore offerings in that era, as much as Space Marines in the case of Guard. However, these were tilted towards Black Library and Forge World rather than White Dwarf (excepting the traitor legions in Index: Astartes).
Guard were in all the 3e campaigns and seemed to fall off to (extensive) forgeworld support in 4th.
I suspect the more ork-heavy stuff in early 3rd was driven a bit by gorka-morka cross promotion, similar to the way the 40k inquisition lived and died with the 54mm range. And then a ton of chaos/renegade stuff from forgeworld, the eye of terror campaign, gaunts ghosts, etc.
Aside from the orks the xenos always seemed to be guest stars in the (mostly forgeworld) campaigns that I remember.
I really liked Codex: Witch Hunters. I don't know what edition it was (4th I think?) but it gave you a real sense of what the Inquisition & Sisters of Battle were about. It also accidentally made Sisters of Battle really good at the start of 5th Edition which was funny lol
Haighus wrote: I'd argue Imperial Guard and maybe Chaos also got extensive lore offerings in that era, as much as Space Marines in the case of Guard. However, these were tilted towards Black Library and Forge World rather than White Dwarf (excepting the traitor legions in Index: Astartes).
Guard were in all the 3e campaigns and seemed to fall off to (extensive) forgeworld support in 4th.
I suspect the more ork-heavy stuff in early 3rd was driven a bit by gorka-morka cross promotion, similar to the way the 40k inquisition lived and died with the 54mm range. And then a ton of chaos/renegade stuff from forgeworld, the eye of terror campaign, gaunts ghosts, etc.
Aside from the orks the xenos always seemed to be guest stars in the (mostly forgeworld) campaigns that I remember.
Yeah, the Orks lucked out in a sense by being the antagonists in the 3rd War for Armageddon campaign, followed by Chaos in the 13th Black Crusade campaign. The third campaign, The Fall of Medusa, included every major faction but also had much flatter, less impactful lore and did much less to add lore to the included factions.
I accept Andykp's point about Ork lore being gutted from the 2nd to 3rd edition codices in terms of their culture and organisation. However, 3rd edition was great for lore about how Orks run a major campaign. The 3rd War for Armageddon website was a goldmine of information on this and included new Ork formations not previously seen in any significant way (such as teleporta forces and artillery warbands), as well as their strengths and weaknesses in large-scale warfare. I still read the website via the Wayback Machine these days (most of the flashplayer maps even run with an emulator plug in!).
I think 3rd edition is perhaps the one that most marks out Orks as a truly terrifying threat in the lore, and not just comic relief. Although I agree that more of the 2nd edition cultural lore should have been published in some way. Weirdly, a lot of that lore eventually filtered through into the structure of the army lists and wargear options, but without the lengthy explanations.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Turnip Monster wrote: I really liked Codex: Witch Hunters. I don't know what edition it was (4th I think?) but it gave you a real sense of what the Inquisition & Sisters of Battle were about. It also accidentally made Sisters of Battle really good at the start of 5th Edition which was funny lol
Tail end of 3rd edition, which shares a design paradigm with the first codices of 4th edition.
I think it is a real shame we never got Codex: Alienhunters to match the other two. For years, the sole Ordo Xenos Inquisitor available for 40k was Solomon Lok from FW.
My vote for best period is either 3e Big Black Book or 4e with 3.5-5e codices depending on the army. I think you could also run 4e with later books, if you wanted Ad Mech and so on.
The only thing I'd consider changing would be the really punishing vehicle rules, especially for transports. Maybe not going as far as 5e did, but doing something about the rolling deathtrap aspect would make more interesting lists much more viable.
I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).
Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.
When the tau appeared in 3rd and started to blow marine armies off the table, there was a huge amount of anger from marine players that they were suddenly not so invincible.
The 'does this reflect the fluff' chestnut is almost always raised for marines and so we just see continual inflation of them through editions, while other armies and units don't have the same advertising agency behind them.
I think Firewarriors upset Marines not just due to their guns, but that pesky 4+ save.
Whilst of course not the best save in the game, it was tricky. Bolters wouldn’t cut it, and given how cheap Firewarriors were (10 points each? I think) turning enough decent AP weapons on them felt somehow wasteful, Spesh when Battlesuits were farting about elsewhere.
Hellebore wrote: I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).
Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.
When the tau appeared in 3rd and started to blow marine armies off the table, there was a huge amount of anger from marine players that they were suddenly not so invincible.
The 'does this reflect the fluff' chestnut is almost always raised for marines and so we just see continual inflation of them through editions, while other armies and units don't have the same advertising agency behind them.
I greatly enjoyed that era. I played Eldar 3rd through 5th and Chaos Marines in late 3rd.
It has been many years, but I did enjoy those editions much more than the 6th-7th edition era.
Imo any Marine player that was upset by Tau wasn't worth their salt. 4+ Saves were easily overcome by Whirlwinds, Heavy Bolters and Assault Cannons, and Tau remained incredibly squishy in CC.
Unfortunately it seems like most Marine players dream of just standing still and Rapid Firing foes to oblivion, rather than maneuvre and bring reasonable fire support.
3rd-4th Ed Tau were a wonderful army. This was the days before they became super-mecha-focussed. Those Tau vehicles like the Hammerhead and Devilfish look so hot next to Fire Warriors and smaller Battlesuits like the Stealth and Crisis.
Hellebore wrote: I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).
Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.
I played Tyranids and Guard in that era. Not getting armor saves was fine when Marines were only throwing one shot apiece at over half range, and died when they lost a single wound. Guard especially had no trouble out-dakkaing Marines point-for-point, especially from cover; the danger was losing partial squads to morale or getting roped into close combat.
Post-SM2.0 in 8th was a much, much more frustrating time as a non-Marine player, with Marines getting multiple shots and re-rolls everywhere and W2 and 2+ in cover and the new AP system actually reducing the effectiveness of classic anti-Marine weapons like plasma.
Hellebore wrote: I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).
Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.
I played Tyranids and Guard in that era. Not getting armor saves was fine when Marines were only throwing one shot apiece at over half range, and died when they lost a single wound. Guard especially had no trouble out-dakkaing Marines point-for-point, especially from cover; the danger was losing partial squads to morale or getting roped into close combat.
Post-SM2.0 in 8th was a much, much more frustrating time as a non-Marine player, with Marines getting multiple shots and re-rolls everywhere and W2 and 2+ in cover and the new AP system actually reducing the effectiveness of classic anti-Marine weapons like plasma.
Certainly as the game developed and AP2 became more common. But then they gave terminators a 5+ invulnerable because things were able to one shot them and the marine rules arms race began and hasn't really stopped.
The 2 wound marine in the current paradigm is being eroded by 2 wound weapons becoming more common - the 10th ed equivalent of a the 4th ed AP2 spam.
At least with ASM, a -1 affects a marine, whereas AP5 did nothing to them. It is a really hard rule to balance, because every point your save increases, you ignore a whole AP band, so Sv3+ negates 3 whole AP bands, while modifiers apply incrementally across all saves.
There are a lot of ways the AP system could have been tweaked and the HH rules have shown a few patches, but no real changes to the core all or nothing mechanic.
You could for example have 5+ the minimum save (as 6+ is really not worth wasting your time rolling), and have AP=Sv be -1 to save while AP >Sv ignores it. Would give AP1 some value against 2+ terminators and would balance AP2 so you wouldn't need invulnerables on everything.
Or, you could just let the actual Save value represent the chance of them being killed, rather than applying AP. 5+ to save is already low, mucking about with it is just insulting.
You can then apply USRs to weapons: Anti Infantry - infantry models get -1 to save from this weapon; Anti Tank - infantry models get no save, etc.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.
3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.
That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.
But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.
As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.
Fair enough. My only curiosity is your take on "rich background". The Index Astartes articles fleshed out the Legions more than ever before. We got the Craftworld Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Witch Hunters, Demon Hunters, Deathwatch, we had PDFs for the epicast titans, FW was kicking out cool stuff, Speed Freeks [lol autocorreced to Greeks], Armageddon, The Hive Fleet invasion (technically 4th but that's really a continuation of 3.5), white dwarf was adding new units (Mounted Demonettes, Rail Rifles, Kroot Armies, Armored Company) and so much more.
I felt the lore and background was more open for the players to make their own.
At Dakka we had a guy with a Chaos army that was a hockey team (including Zambonis on his transports), and don't get me started on the Vehicle Design Rules.
I will say that the tournament/competitive scene does seem to have really amped up around then. But I think that was mostly because the game was fairly balanced if you didn't have endless collections of models.
I felt the community was far more open and accepting in those days. However... It was mostly guys 30+ years old with a few kids under 12. I think I could count the number of teens my age on one hand. Oh man... And the one single time my girlfriend walked in was a nightmare (to be fair she new of the crowd and dressed to impress).
We had ladder campaigns and the store battle ladders. We had a very competitive scene but 99% of our games were not cut throat gaming. Mostly friendly pick up games that contributed to us all getting more than one game in a week. I practically lived in their lounge, getting in as many games as possible from around 1998 up until they closed and became Battlefield: Manchester (no windows, no parking, across from the park with the most homeless).
ORKS are my go to example of how 3rd did armies dirty. They were gutted by the 3rd codex. 1st edition ORKS had near 500 pages of fluff and rules across three of the best books gw ever made (never mind the epic stuff), 2nd trimmed that but the background all stayed the same and relevant. 3rd edition came and it was all washed away and replaced with pamphlet of a codex with maybe a dozen pages of fluff total. It was a massacre. If that’s when you came to 40K then your knowledge of your faction was so limited. And like mad doc I am a whore for the fluff, I love the back ground. And 3rd killed that off for a long time, even all the add ins like eye of terror etc didn’t come close to just one factions back ground for more 3rd.
I've never gotten why people want lore in rulebooks in the first place and always felt that, especially with GW pricing, that lore and rules should just be permanently excised from the other to cut costs and leave GW to price gouge the fancy, more artfully produced codices while having large rulebooks similar to how early editions of fantasy compiled their lists. Especially in regards that codices post 2e are often just reprinting 2e articles, or are only slightly altered over time. Fundamentally if you've read one codex you've read them all and every subsequent lore packaging becomes wasted space you have to flip through.
I'm of two minds. The lore wrapped up in the rules is IMO one of the passive advertisements GW uses.
It grounds the rules in something, so that when you play you're pulling on the emotional perception of the setting and characters. It's less abstract.
On the other hand, I hate it when they just republish them over and over again.
I'd love a literal encyclopaedia series released in volumes alongside the army lists, but i personally think the immersive intangible connection to the setting and units is lost when they are separated.
So, I dunno. Always a two book release sold as one?
Certainly as the game developed and AP2 became more common. But then they gave terminators a 5+ invulnerable because things were able to one shot them and the marine rules arms race began and hasn't really stopped.
The 2 wound marine in the current paradigm is being eroded by 2 wound weapons becoming more common - the 10th ed equivalent of a the 4th ed AP2 spam.
At least with ASM, a -1 affects a marine, whereas AP5 did nothing to them. It is a really hard rule to balance, because every point your save increases, you ignore a whole AP band, so Sv3+ negates 3 whole AP bands, while modifiers apply incrementally across all saves.
There are a lot of ways the AP system could have been tweaked and the HH rules have shown a few patches, but no real changes to the core all or nothing mechanic.
You could for example have 5+ the minimum save (as 6+ is really not worth wasting your time rolling), and have AP=Sv be -1 to save while AP >Sv ignores it. Would give AP1 some value against 2+ terminators and would balance AP2 so you wouldn't need invulnerables on everything.
Or, you could just let the actual Save value represent the chance of them being killed, rather than applying AP. 5+ to save is already low, mucking about with it is just insulting.
You can then apply USRs to weapons: Anti Infantry - infantry models get -1 to save from this weapon; Anti Tank - infantry models get no save, etc.
AP modifiers as rules are dumb and not how armor penetration works in the first place. They make some sense in the context of Warhammer Fantasy but never make that much sense with 40k because ballistic penetration is more an all or nothing affair. Although to this end it'd make far more sense to give everyone Armor Values rather than bothering with saves at all except for energy shields rolled before armor. One of the things I've hated about 40k is that invul saves, such as applied to terminators to make them more "durable" are just garbage, especially in the modifier focused system of nuhammer. That 5++ would be good if invul saves functioned like wards but regrettably they don't, so it might as well not even exist. Or alternatively with the idea of just switching everything to AV, roll energy saves first, then roll the strength of hits that punch through to see if anything pens.
Wyzilla wrote: AP modifiers as rules are dumb and not how armor penetration works in the first place. They make some sense in the context of Warhammer Fantasy but never make that much sense with 40k because ballistic penetration is more an all or nothing affair...
Ehhh...I'm hesitant to say "you're wrong" here because I'm not a ballistics expert, but, well... If two men fire on the frontal armor of a Tiger tank some distance aways, one with a 9mm pistol and the other with a 57mm AT gun, neither of them are going to do much. IIRC the Tiger's frontal armor is just too thick for either of those to be effective. If the man with the pistol tells the man with the AT gun that they are equally likely to penetrate the Tiger, the pistoleer is a fething moron, because the 57mm AT gun is going to be able to take advantage of lucky shots into weak points - vision slits, machine gun ports, cracks, bad welds, field repairs of damaged plates, etc - in ways that a 9mm pistol simply cannot. We can argue whether good aim/luck would be reasonable to model in a game, but at the end of the day a 57mm AP round is always going to have more penetrative power than a 9mm pistol round. IMO, something like an ASM is the best way to represent this, with the main hangup being the fact that GW stuck to d6s for penetration rolls/armor saves, which limits how granular we can get with ASMs. GW's old all-or-nothing AP system just does not have any means to handle this outside of patches via special rules (eg. Choppas or some of the versions of Rending), which is why regular Space Marines used to be more scared of Battle Cannons than lasguns (AP3 vs AP0), but Terminators were more terrified of lasguns than Battle Cannons (both had the exact same effect on the Terminator's armor save (ie. gak-all), but lasguns could be Rapid Fire'd en masse and fish for failed saves where the Battle Cannon only got to fire once).
Also, obligatory "super spacesteel automagic penetrator caps" and obligatory reminder that a lot of the weapons involved are not going to be doing ballistic penetration anyways as they are not ballistic weapons (lascannons, melta, plasma, Eldar lances, etc).
I do agree that ward saves are a better way to represent the sorts of defensive things that otherwise granted invulns, though.
Wyzilla wrote: AP modifiers as rules are dumb and not how armor penetration works in the first place. They make some sense in the context of Warhammer Fantasy but never make that much sense with 40k because ballistic penetration is more an all or nothing affair...
Ehhh...I'm hesitant to say "you're wrong" here because I'm not a ballistics expert, but, well...
If two men fire on the frontal armor of a Tiger tank some distance aways, one with a 9mm pistol and the other with a 57mm AT gun, neither of them are going to do much. IIRC the Tiger's frontal armor is just too thick for either of those to be effective.
If the man with the pistol tells the man with the AT gun that they are equally likely to penetrate the Tiger, the pistoleer is a fething moron, because the 57mm AT gun is going to be able to take advantage of lucky shots into weak points - vision slits, machine gun ports, cracks, bad welds, field repairs of damaged plates, etc - in ways that a 9mm pistol simply cannot. We can argue whether good aim/luck would be reasonable to model in a game, but at the end of the day a 57mm AP round is always going to have more penetrative power than a 9mm pistol round.
IMO, something like an ASM is the best way to represent this, with the main hangup being the fact that GW stuck to d6s for penetration rolls/armor saves, which limits how granular we can get with ASMs. GW's old all-or-nothing AP system just does not have any means to handle this outside of patches via special rules (eg. Choppas or some of the versions of Rending), which is why regular Space Marines used to be more scared of Battle Cannons than lasguns (AP3 vs AP0), but Terminators were more terrified of lasguns than Battle Cannons (both had the exact same effect on the Terminator's armor save (ie. gak-all), but lasguns could be Rapid Fire'd en masse and fish for failed saves where the Battle Cannon only got to fire once).
Also, obligatory "super spacesteel automagic penetrator caps" and obligatory reminder that a lot of the weapons involved are not going to be doing ballistic penetration anyways as they are not ballistic weapons (lascannons, melta, plasma, Eldar lances, etc).
I do agree that ward saves are a better way to represent the sorts of defensive things that otherwise granted invulns, though.
With regards to Armor Values which trump saves anyway though, that AT gun analogy works perfectly within the system because you tool the strength so that against AV14 or whatever it if rolls a 6 on the additive it socres a penetration - a lucky hit against those weaker points in the armor's front facing. This is also partly why I prefer AV as an idea to saves in the first place as they're more granular without getting into the silliness of modifiers. Plus it just cuts down on time spent messing around with dice since it's part of the attack roll.
Armour penetration does work differently on armoured vehicles vs body armour. Generally, if you don't penetrate an armoured vehicle it is probably fine unless the blast was especially powerful. On the other hand, direct hits that do not penetrate body armour can be heavily degrading to the point of combat ineffectiveness due to force being transmitted through the armour and padding into the squishy bits beyond.
However, this is comparatively marginal in a wargame the scale of 40k using D6s, so I don't think the ASM system necessarily models this better than the old AP system.
Hellebore wrote: I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).
Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.
When the tau appeared in 3rd and started to blow marine armies off the table, there was a huge amount of anger from marine players that they were suddenly not so invincible.
The 'does this reflect the fluff' chestnut is almost always raised for marines and so we just see continual inflation of them through editions, while other armies and units don't have the same advertising agency behind them.
Started with Space Marines, went on to Tau and finally settled on Imperial Guard.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.
3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.
That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.
But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.
As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.
Fair enough. My only curiosity is your take on "rich background". The Index Astartes articles fleshed out the Legions more than ever before. We got the Craftworld Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Witch Hunters, Demon Hunters, Deathwatch, we had PDFs for the epicast titans, FW was kicking out cool stuff, Speed Freeks [lol autocorreced to Greeks], Armageddon, The Hive Fleet invasion (technically 4th but that's really a continuation of 3.5), white dwarf was adding new units (Mounted Demonettes, Rail Rifles, Kroot Armies, Armored Company) and so much more.
I felt the lore and background was more open for the players to make their own.
At Dakka we had a guy with a Chaos army that was a hockey team (including Zambonis on his transports), and don't get me started on the Vehicle Design Rules.
I will say that the tournament/competitive scene does seem to have really amped up around then. But I think that was mostly because the game was fairly balanced if you didn't have endless collections of models.
I felt the community was far more open and accepting in those days. However... It was mostly guys 30+ years old with a few kids under 12. I think I could count the number of teens my age on one hand. Oh man... And the one single time my girlfriend walked in was a nightmare (to be fair she new of the crowd and dressed to impress).
We had ladder campaigns and the store battle ladders. We had a very competitive scene but 99% of our games were not cut throat gaming. Mostly friendly pick up games that contributed to us all getting more than one game in a week. I practically lived in their lounge, getting in as many games as possible from around 1998 up until they closed and became Battlefield: Manchester (no windows, no parking, across from the park with the most homeless).
ORKS are my go to example of how 3rd did armies dirty. They were gutted by the 3rd codex. 1st edition ORKS had near 500 pages of fluff and rules across three of the best books gw ever made (never mind the epic stuff), 2nd trimmed that but the background all stayed the same and relevant. 3rd edition came and it was all washed away and replaced with pamphlet of a codex with maybe a dozen pages of fluff total. It was a massacre. If that’s when you came to 40K then your knowledge of your faction was so limited. And like mad doc I am a whore for the fluff, I love the back ground. And 3rd killed that off for a long time, even all the add ins like eye of terror etc didn’t come close to just one factions back ground for more 3rd.
I've never gotten why people want lore in rulebooks in the first place and always felt that, especially with GW pricing, that lore and rules should just be permanently excised from the other to cut costs and leave GW to price gouge the fancy, more artfully produced codices while having large rulebooks similar to how early editions of fantasy compiled their lists. Especially in regards that codices post 2e are often just reprinting 2e articles, or are only slightly altered over time. Fundamentally if you've read one codex you've read them all and every subsequent lore packaging becomes wasted space you have to flip through.
I’d rather have more lore, guess it’s all about personal preference, must I admit that since 3rd they just rehashed lore and each new codex you had to search for new bits of lore in there. You’ve got to remember that the codexs are written to attract new players so they need some lore in there. I would love it if hey wrote some new original lore only books for the factions like waargh ORKS.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Haighus wrote: Armour penetration does work differently on armoured vehicles vs body armour. Generally, if you don't penetrate an armoured vehicle it is probably fine unless the blast was especially powerful. On the other hand, direct hits that do not penetrate body armour can be heavily degrading to the point of combat ineffectiveness due to force being transmitted through the armour and padding into the squishy bits beyond.
However, this is comparatively marginal in a wargame the scale of 40k using D6s, so I don't think the ASM system necessarily models this better than the old AP system.
To some of us old sweats the AP system is the new fancy way and ASM is going back to the good old days.
Hellebore wrote: I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).
Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.
When the tau appeared in 3rd and started to blow marine armies off the table, there was a huge amount of anger from marine players that they were suddenly not so invincible.
The 'does this reflect the fluff' chestnut is almost always raised for marines and so we just see continual inflation of them through editions, while other armies and units don't have the same advertising agency behind them.
I played Orks mostly in 3e, though I played a few games as Marines and Chaos. I actually agree with you about modifiers, I think judicious use of mods could have done a lot for that game. I'd scale it down from what it was in 2e when I think the mods were too much, but a -1 for autocannon/heavy bolter, -2 for Plasma, -3 for melta style system would have worked fine I think.
It's just not really a deal breaker for me in terms of enjoying the game. I like that Grimdark Future essentially works this way, but it's by no means a perfectly designed game either.
Hellebore wrote: I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).
Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.
When the tau appeared in 3rd and started to blow marine armies off the table, there was a huge amount of anger from marine players that they were suddenly not so invincible.
The 'does this reflect the fluff' chestnut is almost always raised for marines and so we just see continual inflation of them through editions, while other armies and units don't have the same advertising agency behind them.
I played Orks mostly in 3e, though I played a few games as Marines and Chaos. I actually agree with you about modifiers, I think judicious use of mods could have done a lot for that game. I'd scale it down from what it was in 2e when I think the mods were too much, but a -1 for autocannon/heavy bolter, -2 for Plasma, -3 for melta style system would have worked fine I think.
It's just not really a deal breaker for me in terms of enjoying the game. I like that Grimdark Future essentially works this way, but it's by no means a perfectly designed game either.
GDF 2.x is a pretty solid system imo, and using the core rules to use 40k stats doesn't work half bad either. But the new edition feels like it's inventing whole new issues like totally crippling the idea of long ranged firefights at all.
Oh yeah, I also stay with 2.X. I don't like the new version and they seem very focused on selling their own miniatures now. I've got all the PDFs from 2.X saved and I'm happy with it.
Hellebore wrote: Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.
Three wounds to kill a guy in 3+, two wounds to kill a guy in 4+, one wound to kill a guy in 5+ or worse, less cover for the 5+ guy of course.
But higher saves gave higher uncertainty when using the wrong AP against the target so you had to over-commit to be sure. AP modifiers can push away from this to where the wrong gun is 'good enough' and the right gun is slightly better, squeezing the odds together.
Hellebore wrote: Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.
Three wounds to kill a guy in 3+, two wounds to kill a guy in 4+, one wound to kill a guy in 5+ or worse, less cover for the 5+ guy of course.
But higher saves gave higher uncertainty when using the wrong AP against the target so you had to over-commit to be sure. AP modifiers can push away from this to where the wrong gun is 'good enough' and the right gun is slightly better, squeezing the odds together.
It is technically 1.5 wounds to defeat 5+ and 1.2 to defeat 6+, but in practice most small arms ignored 5+ and almost all ignored 6+, so these become 1 wound for AP5 or AP6.
Haighus wrote: It is technically 1.5 wounds to defeat 5+ and 1.2 to defeat 6+, but in practice most small arms ignored 5+ and almost all ignored 6+, so these become 1 wound for AP5 or AP6.
Yes, it started as a slightly longer and less readable post on bolters, the benefits of toughness 4, and the way that slower moves and shorter ranges interacted with how efficiently smaller units could concentrate fire.
But it got a bit wordy :p
Haighus wrote: It is technically 1.5 wounds to defeat 5+ and 1.2 to defeat 6+, but in practice most small arms ignored 5+ and almost all ignored 6+, so these become 1 wound for AP5 or AP6.
Yes, it started as a slightly longer and less readable post on bolters, the benefits of toughness 4, and the way that slower moves and shorter ranges interacted with how efficiently smaller units could concentrate fire.
But it got a bit wordy :p
Sounds like an interesting post though, I'm good with wordy explanations
Wyzilla wrote: AP modifiers as rules are dumb and not how armor penetration works in the first place. They make some sense in the context of Warhammer Fantasy but never make that much sense with 40k because ballistic penetration is more an all or nothing affair.
If you're analyzing armored vehicles with roughly homogenous armor protection, sure.
For an infantryman, even power armor varies from low protection at the joints to bulletproof on the plates. The armor save is not checking whether a lasgun pierced through the solid ceramite, it's checking whether a lasgun found a weak enough spot to inflict damage. An autocannon is going to have a different idea of what constitutes a weak spot, and may be able to pierce armor locations that a lasgun wouldn't, even if it can't blow straight through power armor altogether like a lascannon can.
I like the idea of armor save modifiers, I just don't like how GW implemented them. 3rd-7th produced a gameplay model that wasn't any more realistic in its depiction of body armor but created defined niches for weapons; the problem was that in a MEQ-dominated game that encouraged massing as much AP3 as possible rather than a balanced mix of capabilities.
The issue with the modifier system of 8th-10th is that it's much easier to degrade saves but much harder to deny them entirely. Guardsmen now get saves most of the time while Marines can still be greatly degraded by just AP-1, but still get a save against lascannons and plasma guns. It devalues both good saves and high AP while making poor saves and moderate AP much more useful than they used to be, and that significant change has created knock-on effects that even two editions later GW is still dealing with.
I feel like 9th and 10th has the right approach to unit resilience - but due to lack of knowledge about the game I can’t properly comment on the implementation.
But consider the humble in Terminator.
In 2nd Ed, they were all but invulnerable to small arms fire, saving on 3+ on 2D6. And they had a not unreasonable chance of shrugging off even the heaviest weapons.
3rd-8th? 2+ Save in the AP world seemed good. Except….AP2 weapons weren’t hard to squeeze in, and with just a single wound each at T4, and ever increasing squad head counts and volume of fire? They just weren’t as tough as they could be.
9th - 10th? OK. They have a higher Toughness, their 2+ save (and an inv maybe?), but importantly? Multiple Wounds.
So in 9th and 10th, they are resilient against a great many small arms fire. Some may have AP, but may lack the Damage for each failed save to drop a Terminator. So the three stats combined bring the resilience they need (deserve?) - but they remain vulnerable to high strength, high save mod and fixed or high damage weapons, having to rely on that Inv if they have it.
Now that’s just Terminators, but it’s an example I’m pretty familiar with overall/
Thinking about it, the increasing utility of rapid fire weapons also played a role, thereby making plasma guns far outstrip the other options outside niche circumstances.
A 3rd edition plasma gun could fire one shot out to 24" or two to 12" if stationary, or one shot at 12" if moving. If firing two shots, it blew up on a 1 or a 2. The model couldn't assault afterwards. If your unit plans to be mobile, it gets the same number of shots and range with a meltagun, or further range with a grenade launcher.
By 5th edition plasma guns always fired one shot to 24" and two to 12", even if they moved, and only ever blew up on a 1. Other special weapons got no improvement.
This significant buff to rapid fire weapons made the game more lethal in general, but I think it was particularly bad for plasma gun lethality.
Haighus wrote: By 5th edition plasma guns always fired one shot to 24" and two to 12", even if they moved, and only ever blew up on a 1. Other special weapons got no improvement.
IIRC it was a mixed bag with melta being so important for hitting vehicles in 5th.
But the rapid fire change was big for attacks after disembarking and deepstriking (or rather deepstriking sternguard, since chaos terminators were already running plasmacide in 4th).
I think I get the reason for the change though as it did give an incentive to move into charge range and risk the attacking unit. In 3rd edition if you were just outside of charge range you'd sit there for two turns shooting instead, or one turn shooting and one turn backing up while shooting.
Guard also made it worse by having both a cheap plasma unit with the veterans and long range plasma blasts spammer with the executioner. I still remember one of such tanks simply deleting a full strenght Plague Marine unit.
That codex really was designed to soft brake 5th ed rules.
Tyran wrote: Guard also made it worse by having both a cheap plasma unit with the veterans and long range plasma blasts spammer with the executioner. I still remember one of such tanks simply deleting a full strenght Plague Marine unit.
That codex really was designed to soft brake 5th ed rules.
The executioner was just three guardsmen with plasmacannons standing on a tank. At least it had the decency to give you cover saves and not to lash of submission your squad into a blast-marker shaped formation before shooting you :p
Despite Cruddace increasing its firepower threefold from the original forgeworld rules it was arguably one of his more restrained units...
Haighus wrote: Armour penetration does work differently on armoured vehicles vs body armour. Generally, if you don't penetrate an armoured vehicle it is probably fine unless the blast was especially powerful.
Another important difference is that tanks are actually very brittle, you can think of them as armored eggs. They ignore anything that cannot penetrate their armor, but once something penetrates tanks just die, not the old nonsense of roll D6 and nothing important happens half the time and/or lose an HP/wound.
A human suffering a wound shot can survive depending on shot placement. A tank suffering a penetrating hit simply cannot survive outside of borderline divine intervention.
That is also why modern tank doctrine depends a lot on infantry to screen enemy AT teams, cover and/or mobility to avoid direct hits. The popular idea of a tank simply ignoring everything the enemy throws at it may be true against small arms but quickly becomes a fantasy once dedicated AT weaponry is involved. Which is also why it is also not uncommon for people to abandon* tanks when morale breaks, tanks are metal coffins and the first thing to die when things go wrong.
But obviusly the above is kinda hard to design around because people don't like their tanks immediately exploding to a lascannon even though that is the "realistic" outcome.
*BTW the old morale rules would have benefited from morale impacting vehicles beyond the damage table, with crews abandoning tanks being a possibility.
The 5th Ed Guard codex is one of the big reasons why I am a proponent of 5th Ed core rules with 3.5-4th codices if you want to do oldhammer.
I think a big part of the negative perception of 5th comes from the codices that not only created codex creep, but violated some of the subtle but important design principles that enabled the game to work. It wasn't just that the Guard codex was powerful, it's that they got AP3 on Stormtroopers, plasma gun spam on Veterans, greater access to AP3 blasts on non-Ordnance weapons, aircraft in the core codex, 3 tanks per Heavy Support choice, orders to magnify their effectiveness and avoid Gets Hot, and it all added up to an incredibly oppressive package.
It completely threw out the tradeoffs and limitations that had been established in prior editions, where high-AP had strong downsides (Gets Hot, Ordnance, short range, and/or low volume) and high-armor vehicles were sharply limited. It broke the game, and subsequent codices just continued the trend.
Wind back to before all that, and 5th Ed is a solid ruleset.
Haighus wrote: Armour penetration does work differently on armoured vehicles vs body armour. Generally, if you don't penetrate an armoured vehicle it is probably fine unless the blast was especially powerful.
Another important difference is that tanks are actually very brittle, you can think of them as armored eggs. They ignore anything that cannot penetrate their armor, but once something penetrates tanks just die, not the old nonsense of roll D6 and nothing important happens half the time and/or lose an HP/wound.
A human suffering a wound shot can survive depending on shot placement. A tank suffering a penetrating hit simply cannot survive outside of borderline divine intervention.
That is also why modern tank doctrine depends a lot on infantry to screen enemy AT teams, cover and/or mobility to avoid direct hits. The popular idea of a tank simply ignoring everything the enemy throws at it may be true against small arms but quickly becomes a fantasy once dedicated AT weaponry is involved. Which is also why it is also not uncommon for people to abandon* tanks when morale breaks, tanks are metal coffins and the first thing to die when things go wrong.
But obviusly the above is kinda hard to design around because people don't like their tanks immediately exploding to a lascannon even though that is the "realistic" outcome.
*BTW the old morale rules would have benefited from morale impacting vehicles beyond the damage table, with crews abandoning tanks being a possibility.
Tanks can be incapacitated. Optics, tracks, ammunition depending on the tanks layout, are prone to being shattered by fire that may not even penetrate. The crew can be stunned by impact or stuff flying inside. And it is hard to determine what's going on outside of a tank so I'd bet you'd have a hard time knowing what's having a go at you and how well equipped it might be to deal with you. (I bet because i never was in a firefight, but training in Leclerc tank it was definitely hard to keep track of whatever was going on and whether it where flares or blank grenades or polish blank 125mm shells going off, all is quite muffled and you can't see gak half the time. Sooo...).
BA has got a very good representation of this encompassing both destruction by hit or fire resulting from a hit, and damages both mental and physical on the crew thanks to the pin mecanic.
A.T. wrote:
Despite Cruddace increasing its firepower threefold from the original forgeworld rules it was arguably one of his more restrained units...
The FW unit had a large blast instead of 3 small blasts, and a longer range. I think that made it a better analogue to the standard Leman Russ, and felt like more of a fun switch then. The 5th edition version was a bit nuts, although it did cost >200pts if you took plasma sponsons.
Tyran wrote:
Haighus wrote: Armour penetration does work differently on armoured vehicles vs body armour. Generally, if you don't penetrate an armoured vehicle it is probably fine unless the blast was especially powerful.
Another important difference is that tanks are actually very brittle. They ignore anything that cannot penetrate their armor, but once something penetrates tanks just die, not the old nonsense of roll D6 and nothing important happens half the time and/or lose an HP/wound.
A human suffering a wound shot can survive depending on shot placement. A tank suffering a penetrating hit simply cannot survive outside of borderline divine intervention.
That is also why modern tank doctrine depends a lot on infantry to screen enemy AT teams, cover and/or mobility to avoid direct hits. The popular idea of a tank simply ignoring everything the enemy throws at it may be true against small arms but quickly becomes a fantasy once dedicated AT weaponry is involved. Which is also why it is also not uncommon for people to abandon* tanks when morale breaks, tanks are metal coffins and the first thing to die when things go wrong.
But obviusly the above is kinda hard to design around because people don't like their tanks immediately exploding to a lascannon even though that is the "realistic" outcome.
*BTW the old morale rules would have benefited from morale impacting vehicles beyond the damage table, with crews abandoning tanks being a possibility.
Well, if you look at the tables, I think it can be rationalised as only the wrecked and explodes results being true penetrating hits, witha weapon destroyed result just taking off a gun but not penetrating the crew compartment, an immobilised doing the same for the motive system, and shaken/stunned representing near misses rather than true penetrations.
I think the increase in lethality you mention above occurred during WWII, although it wasn't complete by the end of the war. The average crew lost per knocked out Sherman was about 1, for example.
Also, tanks being vulnerable doesn't mean they die to the first antitank weapon- it can still take multiple shots before one hits the vulnerable point. Also, crew abandoning tanks are often not any safer, especially if the tanks are being attacked by things like artillery or aircraft where being inside the tank requires a direct hot to kill, but outside is vulnerable to shrapnel.
A.T. wrote:
Haighus wrote: By 5th edition plasma guns always fired one shot to 24" and two to 12", even if they moved, and only ever blew up on a 1. Other special weapons got no improvement.
IIRC it was a mixed bag with melta being so important for hitting vehicles in 5th.
But the rapid fire change was big for attacks after disembarking and deepstriking (or rather deepstriking sternguard, since chaos terminators were already running plasmacide in 4th).
I think I get the reason for the change though as it did give an incentive to move into charge range and risk the attacking unit. In 3rd edition if you were just outside of charge range you'd sit there for two turns shooting instead, or one turn shooting and one turn backing up while shooting.
Yeah, meltaguns maintained a use case, but plasma becoming the allrounder weapon makes sense when you see the buffs to rapid fire weapons that assault weapons didn't get. Pistol weapons got actively nerfed by losing two shots when stationary, although there was a couple of editions where models could shoot two pistols if they had them.
I don't think this is a problem unique to plasma guns, it generally increased lethality when basic small arms chucked out considerably more shots whilst on the move. But plasma guns were powerful and spammable for some armies.
I'd also add that from what I try to look, external additive armour is strictly superior to standard composite armour as it actually counter acts the shot and help have it go bang a little furhter from the tanks main hull. Obviously never 100 proof, but probably better.
catbarf wrote: It completely threw out the tradeoffs and limitations that had been established in prior editions, where high-AP had strong downsides (Gets Hot, Ordnance, short range, and/or low volume) and high-armor vehicles were sharply limited. It broke the game, and subsequent codices just continued the trend.
*checks 5th Ed Guard Codex on Lexicanium*
Oh. Robin Cruddace you say?
What a shock.
When he's not busy fething over Tyranids, he's knee-deep in making his fav faction the best in the game. He's like the Pete Haines of modern 40k.
Haighus wrote: I don't think this is a problem unique to plasma guns, it generally increased lethality when basic small arms chucked out considerably more shots whilst on the move. But plasma guns were powerful and spammable for some armies.
The 'on the move' change I think cut both ways with small arms when you put your unit within automatic charge range and your opponent had no obligation to remove the nearest models.
It was a choice to take a risk to get a reward, while old rapid fire you'd stand and shoot and then your opponent would get to move up and get shot... and then without run in the old editions you'd either shoot them twice or back up and repeat step 1.
Where plasma in 4th/5th edition fell over was regular infantry jumping out of vehicles and deepstrike with twice as many plasma shots. While they did increase the price of it in 5th the vehicles and deepstrike became more practical and plasma itself became more spamable.
In retrospect perhaps I didn't notice it so much at the time as we had a number of chaos players locally and they had been dropping double-shot plasma forever - at 5pts a model on their terminators in 4e they were actually cheaper than 5e sternguard drops up to a point.
catbarf wrote: It completely threw out the tradeoffs and limitations that had been established in prior editions, where high-AP had strong downsides (Gets Hot, Ordnance, short range, and/or low volume) and high-armor vehicles were sharply limited. It broke the game, and subsequent codices just continued the trend.
Sounds like the 3.5 chaos codex :p
Say what you will for Ward but he at least tried to break every single codex he got his hands on. Cruddace played favourites - when he was assigned the 5e sisters of battle he couldn't even be bothered to change the unit costs on his copy/pasted command unit and in his online 'making of' blog on the GW website he managed to put down the black and white base-coat on about four models before decided he couldn't be bothered and packed it all in.
Haighus wrote: I don't think this is a problem unique to plasma guns, it generally increased lethality when basic small arms chucked out considerably more shots whilst on the move. But plasma guns were powerful and spammable for some armies.
The 'on the move' change I think cut both ways with small arms when you put your unit within automatic charge range and your opponent had no obligation to remove the nearest models.
It was a choice to take a risk to get a reward, while old rapid fire you'd stand and shoot and then your opponent would get to move up and get shot... and then without run in the old editions you'd either shoot them twice or back up and repeat step 1.
Where plasma in 4th/5th edition fell over was regular infantry jumping out of vehicles and deepstrike with twice as many plasma shots. While they did increase the price of it in 5th the vehicles and deepstrike became more practical and plasma itself became more spamable.
In retrospect perhaps I didn't notice it so much at the time as we had a number of chaos players locally and they had been dropping double-shot plasma forever - at 5pts a model on their terminators in 4e they were actually cheaper than 5e sternguard drops up to a point.
True, but they got that increased flexibility for no additional drawbacks. In addition, the move and shoot out to 24" was also important. It increased the threat range out to 30".
As a balance thing, assault and heavy got nothing (until snap shots on moving towards the end) and pistols got worse.
catbarf wrote: It completely threw out the tradeoffs and limitations that had been established in prior editions, where high-AP had strong downsides (Gets Hot, Ordnance, short range, and/or low volume) and high-armor vehicles were sharply limited. It broke the game, and subsequent codices just continued the trend.
Sounds like the 3.5 chaos codex :p
Say what you will for Ward but he at least tried to break every single codex he got his hands on. Cruddace played favourites - when he was assigned the 5e sisters of battle he couldn't even be bothered to change the unit costs on his copy/pasted command unit and in his online 'making of' blog on the GW website he managed to put down the black and white base-coat on about four models before decided he couldn't be bothered and packed it all in.
I still think Ward made good codices. It was his lore that was... spotty.
Haighus wrote: True, but they got that increased flexibility for no additional drawbacks. In addition, the move and shoot out to 24" was also important. It increased the threat range out to 30".
6th edition was move and shoot 30"
4th and 5th edition were move and shoot twice at 12" or stand still for one shot at max range
3rd edition was move and shoot once at 12", or twice if stationary at 12", or once if stationary at max range
The 6e change was ill advised IMO. The 4e change I can see as well intentioned to encourage clashes over back-stepping gunlines but the dismount/deepstrike benefits are unfortunate.
Haighus wrote: True, but they got that increased flexibility for no additional drawbacks. In addition, the move and shoot out to 24" was also important. It increased the threat range out to 30".
6th edition was move and shoot 30"
4th and 5th edition were move and shoot twice at 12" or stand still for one shot at max range
3rd edition was move and shoot once at 12", or twice if stationary at 12", or once if stationary at max range
The 6e change was ill advised IMO. The 4e change I can see as well intentioned to encourage clashes over back-stepping gunlines but the dismount/deepstrike benefits are unfortunate.
I liked the 3rd ed rapid fire best, there was at least a trade-off between assault and rapid fire weapons. An assault 2 12" shuriken catapult was sort of comparable to a bolter because with the catapult you could fire twice on the move and still charge (disregarding that fluff-wise you really wouldn't want to get that close with typical catapult-wielding units).
The backstepping/kiting was definitely a thing though. Back then you needed a special rule to run in the shooting phase that only fast units got ("fleet of x"). I remember having my last remaining screamer killer kited to death by my opponent's last remaining couple of terminators with an assault cannon. There was simply no way it could catch up.
Not sure how 5th holds up rules-wise, it's been too long and too many editions. I did dislike 5th's melee morale resolution rules though (pretty sure it was 5th), the one where you take extra casualties if you lose combat while being fearless. I can't say if it was balanced or not, but it felt like a huge nerf for stuff like hormagaunts.
shortymcnostrill wrote: I did dislike 5th's melee morale resolution rules though (pretty sure it was 5th), the one where you take extra casualties if you lose combat while being fearless. I can't say if it was balanced or not, but it felt like a huge nerf for stuff like hormagaunts.
In 5e fearless units took wounds for how much they lost the combat by, in 4e you took wounds based on how outnumbered you were.
shortymcnostrill wrote: I liked the 3rd ed rapid fire best, there was at least a trade-off between assault and rapid fire weapons. An assault 2 12" shuriken catapult was sort of comparable to a bolter because with the catapult you could fire twice on the move and still charge (disregarding that fluff-wise you really wouldn't want to get that close with typical catapult-wielding units).
The backstepping/kiting was definitely a thing though. Back then you needed a special rule to run in the shooting phase that only fast units got ("fleet of x"). I remember having my last remaining screamer killer kited to death by my opponent's last remaining couple of terminators with an assault cannon. There was simply no way it could catch up.
Not sure how 5th holds up rules-wise, it's been too long and too many editions. I did dislike 5th's melee morale resolution rules though (pretty sure it was 5th), the one where you take extra casualties if you lose combat while being fearless. I can't say if it was balanced or not, but it felt like a huge nerf for stuff like hormagaunts.
From a design perspective I liked that the sharp limitations on Rapid Fire weapons in 3rd Ed gave the Assault type a reason to exist. It meant you might actually consider, say, putting shotguns on IG Veterans, so instead of 1 shot on the move you'd get 2, even though you'd never want to charge into melee. At the same time, it felt odd that armies like Marines, which would want to get in combat when appropriate, were incentivized to hold still in gunlines to maximize firepower. It really should have been an 'all-rounder' weapon type, but instead greatly favored static shooting.
Rather than allow Rapid Fire to shoot twice at half range whether moving or not, I think a better iteration might have been to allow a unit that only fired one shot (whether it moved or not) to still charge. Assault would remain ideal for full firepower on the move, and Rapid Fire wouldn't allow piling out of a transport or deep strike and immediately double-firing, but flexible units like Tactical Marines would have the option to shoot (just one shot apiece) and then finish the job in melee.
Anyways, kiting was definitely A Thing but I think that only became a major issue with kill-em-all missions. If you had to hold objectives it was a lot harder to keep running and whittling those monstrous creatures down. I do remember it being difficult to catch tanks in melee, though; and monstrous creatures always had the issue of too few attacks to deal with tarpitting.
catbarf wrote: Rather than allow Rapid Fire to shoot twice at half range whether moving or not, I think a better iteration might have been to allow a unit that only fired one shot (whether it moved or not) to still charge
To an extent this was a thing in 5th (from 4e chaos onwards) where mixed role units like marines had 12" pistols while more gunline units like guard and necrons only had their rapid fire weapon. Would have combined well with 3e rapid fire.
Rather than allow Rapid Fire to shoot twice at half range whether moving or not, I think a better iteration might have been to allow a unit that only fired one shot (whether it moved or not) to still charge. Assault would remain ideal for full firepower on the move, and Rapid Fire wouldn't allow piling out of a transport or deep strike and immediately double-firing, but flexible units like Tactical Marines would have the option to shoot (just one shot apiece) and then finish the job in melee.
Would this be any functionally different than using a bolt pistol before charging?
Or was giving tactical marines a bolt pistol a later invention?
edit: I guess it would matter for guardsmen, the other ubiquitous "I have a rapid fire gun" archetype.
Rihgu wrote: Would this be any functionally different than using a bolt pistol before charging?
Or was giving tactical marines a bolt pistol a later invention?
Both - a marine armed with a bolt pistol and plasma gun would only get to shoot the bolt pistol before charging, and bolt pistols were not freebies until the 4e chaos codex (late-ish 4th).
For 7th and 8th, the biggest flaw in the Formation plan was….not all Formations were equal.
Army A might need to take specific, already useful units and they’d all get free Wargear and/or transports.
Army B? Fairly random selection of stuff and your HQ got to re-roll a single roll of 1, once per game if you were playing on a Wednesday which was an even numbered day in an odd numbered month, during a leap year.
Although apocalypse and tank war (how's it called again?) Supplement formation are fine I think. Used them a few time and all went well. Fairly limited in nature and had to pay for it though.
Rihgu wrote: Would this be any functionally different than using a bolt pistol before charging?
Or was giving tactical marines a bolt pistol a later invention?
Both - a marine armed with a bolt pistol and plasma gun would only get to shoot the bolt pistol before charging, and bolt pistols were not freebies until the 4e chaos codex (late-ish 4th).
True, I was too close-minded about this. I think my brain must've went to 30k tactical marines or forgot plasma was an option for tactical marines back then.
shortymcnostrill wrote: I liked the 3rd ed rapid fire best, there was at least a trade-off between assault and rapid fire weapons. An assault 2 12" shuriken catapult was sort of comparable to a bolter because with the catapult you could fire twice on the move and still charge (disregarding that fluff-wise you really wouldn't want to get that close with typical catapult-wielding units).
The backstepping/kiting was definitely a thing though. Back then you needed a special rule to run in the shooting phase that only fast units got ("fleet of x"). I remember having my last remaining screamer killer kited to death by my opponent's last remaining couple of terminators with an assault cannon. There was simply no way it could catch up.
Not sure how 5th holds up rules-wise, it's been too long and too many editions. I did dislike 5th's melee morale resolution rules though (pretty sure it was 5th), the one where you take extra casualties if you lose combat while being fearless. I can't say if it was balanced or not, but it felt like a huge nerf for stuff like hormagaunts.
From a design perspective I liked that the sharp limitations on Rapid Fire weapons in 3rd Ed gave the Assault type a reason to exist. It meant you might actually consider, say, putting shotguns on IG Veterans, so instead of 1 shot on the move you'd get 2, even though you'd never want to charge into melee. At the same time, it felt odd that armies like Marines, which would want to get in combat when appropriate, were incentivized to hold still in gunlines to maximize firepower. It really should have been an 'all-rounder' weapon type, but instead greatly favored static shooting.
Rather than allow Rapid Fire to shoot twice at half range whether moving or not, I think a better iteration might have been to allow a unit that only fired one shot (whether it moved or not) to still charge. Assault would remain ideal for full firepower on the move, and Rapid Fire wouldn't allow piling out of a transport or deep strike and immediately double-firing, but flexible units like Tactical Marines would have the option to shoot (just one shot apiece) and then finish the job in melee.
Anyways, kiting was definitely A Thing but I think that only became a major issue with kill-em-all missions. If you had to hold objectives it was a lot harder to keep running and whittling those monstrous creatures down. I do remember it being difficult to catch tanks in melee, though; and monstrous creatures always had the issue of too few attacks to deal with tarpitting.
I think it is much easier to just add free pistols for those flexible units, and leave shooty-focussed units as less mobile. Especially as the actual pistol models in 40k really look more like compact SMGs/PDWs.
In addition, I think tanks being hard to catch in melee and monstrous creatures being tarpitted is fine. The former makes sense and is still limited by terrain and space, and the latter is a reasonable counter for an otherwise pretty effective unit type. Monstrous creatures generally ignore morale and could take a lot of punishment without degrading. Having their weaknesses being kiting (situational) and screening/tarpitting provides for interesting tactical options beyond just massed firepower/melee power. I think more options based in manouevre rather than overt killing are good.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote: Although apocalypse and tank war (how's it called again?) Supplement formation are fine I think. Used them a few time and all went well. Fairly limited in nature and had to pay for it though.
Spearhead. Looked cool, don't think I ever saw anyone play it.
Monsters need a Move characteristic, the 6" standard move was fine when the biggest thing around was a Carnifex but it became silly when you start including larger stuff. Which is also why everyone (except Tyranids) had special rules for their melee MC movement, IIRCDKs jumped and teleported.
Then again one of the issues of Old 40k is that it couldn't really handle the larger MCs that have been introduced since 5th ed. Gargantuan rules were too much but standard MC rules were too little.
Oh yeah, spearhead! well, we tried it a few times (maybe three) and it came out fun, nice little flavor and addition to your usual gaming. For added fun, I recommend using a somewhat bigger table than usual though to accomodate longer ranges when fighting tanks Vs tanks. Not so much if Tyranids and their MCs are involved.
Rather than allow Rapid Fire to shoot twice at half range whether moving or not, I think a better iteration might have been to allow a unit that only fired one shot (whether it moved or not) to still charge. Assault would remain ideal for full firepower on the move, and Rapid Fire wouldn't allow piling out of a transport or deep strike and immediately double-firing, but flexible units like Tactical Marines would have the option to shoot (just one shot apiece) and then finish the job in melee.
Would this be any functionally different than using a bolt pistol before charging?
Or was giving tactical marines a bolt pistol a later invention?
edit: I guess it would matter for guardsmen, the other ubiquitous "I have a rapid fire gun" archetype.
Pistols came later.
And while I'm normally a fan of designing for effect rather than designing for simulation, the idea of units armed with assault rifles putting them away and drawing pistols as they perform an assault feels very wrong. Doubly so when that solution was rarely modeled; most people just agreed that Tacticals visibly carrying nothing but bolters actually had invisible bolt pistols as well.
It feels like a kludge, when the underlying problem was simply that weapons that in the fluff are frequently used while closing to contact couldn't be used in that manner on the table.
I mean, not like it really matters, just spitballing ideas here. But charging aside, I do think the change they ended up making in 4th- two shots at half range, whether you moved or not- was a first step towards alpha-strike-focused gameplay and would have significant consequences down the line.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.
3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.
That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.
But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.
As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.
Fair enough. My only curiosity is your take on "rich background". The Index Astartes articles fleshed out the Legions more than ever before. We got the Craftworld Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Witch Hunters, Demon Hunters, Deathwatch, we had PDFs for the epicast titans, FW was kicking out cool stuff, Speed Freeks [lol autocorreced to Greeks], Armageddon, The Hive Fleet invasion (technically 4th but that's really a continuation of 3.5), white dwarf was adding new units (Mounted Demonettes, Rail Rifles, Kroot Armies, Armored Company) and so much more.
I felt the lore and background was more open for the players to make their own.
At Dakka we had a guy with a Chaos army that was a hockey team (including Zambonis on his transports), and don't get me started on the Vehicle Design Rules.
I will say that the tournament/competitive scene does seem to have really amped up around then. But I think that was mostly because the game was fairly balanced if you didn't have endless collections of models.
I felt the community was far more open and accepting in those days. However... It was mostly guys 30+ years old with a few kids under 12. I think I could count the number of teens my age on one hand. Oh man... And the one single time my girlfriend walked in was a nightmare (to be fair she new of the crowd and dressed to impress).
We had ladder campaigns and the store battle ladders. We had a very competitive scene but 99% of our games were not cut throat gaming. Mostly friendly pick up games that contributed to us all getting more than one game in a week. I practically lived in their lounge, getting in as many games as possible from around 1998 up until they closed and became Battlefield: Manchester (no windows, no parking, across from the park with the most homeless).
If you entered 40k with 3rd, you would not have any information on those factions. the 2nd ed codexes were on average 90 pages long, and each unit got its own write up, along with general faction history and great snippets of lore in outboxes.
I'm not sure if they ever mentioned the 3 moons of the eldar homeworld after the one outbox in the 2nd ed codex for example.
And, when they started writing proper books again, they were all basically just trimmed down versions of the original material, often losing the turn of phrase and evocative nature in the process.
And every book since then has basically just been a reprint of those 2nd ed codexes, and imo, never quite as good.
Prior to 3rds launch I spent several months reading all the 2nd edition codex and a good deal of Space Wolf, Eldar, Tyranid and Ork models. Also Epic stuff.
I remember the Angels of Death book being pretty hollow. Just marines in different colors. Some drank blood and the others liked bathrobes.
Eldar? That codex was so ugly I could barely look at it. I also don't think elves have a place in Sci-Fi so maybe I'm biased.
Ugly models, and stupid themes so I don't even know if I actually read it in its entirety. I probably just threw it aside once I saw the Chaos codex.
It sounds like you forgot about the Craftworld Eldar codex. That was a vast improvement.
They brought back that stupid lore entry+unit entry crap for like 5th or 6th edition didn't they? The horrible versions where the rules for Eldar were chopped up and spread throughout the entire book?
In 7th edition aircraft felt way more fun to use and were more thematic. I remember when one of my vendettas hit a hive tyrant and caused it to crash to the ground, allowing one of my friends to charge it the same turn and finish it off with his sisters.
I also remember a game where the objectives for the mission were to secure skyfire auto cannons around the table. On turn three (or later i don't quite remember) i finally captured one of the guns and it allowed me to finally strike out at my opponents forgeworld fire raptor gunship. I lucked out and with a single shot and a failed roll on the pen table (it may have been a different table I don't remember) it crashed and plummeted to the ground. Truly a lucky hail mary of a shot that won me that game.
catbarf wrote: I do think the change they ended up making in 4th- two shots at half range, whether you moved or not- was a first step towards alpha-strike-focused gameplay and would have significant consequences down the line.
I think that move was decent. Being able to fire twice on the move meant that Marines could act a little more like the shock troops they're intended to be. It was also balanced a bit in 4th by the fact that, yeah you could fire twice coming out of a transport, but the transport rules were incredibly punishing to the occupants if destroyed. A bit of a risk reward thing there. The real problem definitely came later when special-weapon-spam became a thing, and transports were far less punishing.
At least Eldar got the Avenger Shuriken Catapult in response later, but the standard Cat started looking worse in comparison.
Whilst I pretty much universally love the flyer models, I think they were overall a mistake.
GW has of course tried a few ways to implement flyers in 40K scale rules wise, but none have really satisfied. The scope of the battle is just too small for such units to make sense.
Stuff like the Valkyrie just about work, as in role they’re kind of hybrid jet/helicopter strike units with transport capability. But even then, they just don’t really feel right to me.
But dedicated bombers and fighters? 40K just isn’t the right scale for them, at all. Even the earlier Forgeworld rules reduced your expensive kit to little more than a fancy marker.
If memory serves, you chose your entry point and exit point, and at an unusual point in the turn, the model moved in an imaginary straight line between the two points, and could attack enemy units within a set range of that line. Now as an abstract, that kind of works as it fairly accurately represent a fighter or bomber moving at high speed streaking over the battlefield, giving something a kicking.
But…as I said? You really didn’t need the model for it. Not really. As (correct me if I’m wrong!) enemy ranges were measured to the line of travel, not the model itself.
And all the other iterations have been worse, turning flyers into skimmers of limited manoeuvres.
In summary? Models = pretty much universally gorgeous. Rules - you can’t make them work and make going to the bother of buying, assembling and painting a model make sense.
Flyers just do not fit into the game, rules-wise. One of those things that are either over-tuned or under-tuned. I considered getting the Stormtalon recently, but it's just not worth 60 dollars for the in-game hassle.
At least in the base version of BA, you are allowed to use minis of aircraft but they literally are meant to be fancy tokens.
Only thing I would change with bolt actions forward observer airstrikes is that when you roll a mistargeting, the opponent should only be allowed to designate a victim to a certain distance of the original target, as it can be somewhat upsetting... Although you could argue that considering the shear delete button they can be... That might balance them a bit.
Eldar? That codex was so ugly I could barely look at it. I also don't think elves have a place in Sci-Fi so maybe I'm biased.
Funny, I like Eldar in 40k and have no interest in any of the fantasy elves. In fantasy settings I like dwarves, orcs/goblinoids, and halflings.
I like them all to one degree or another, but I like the eldar most, and the old world dwarfs more than ulthuan elves.
Eldar are, I think, the crowning achievement of GWs creativity in terms of xenos faction design. They blend sci-fi, Tolkein fantasy, and "60's psychadelic-crystal" design together in a really special way both visually and lore-wise.
Their early background is harder to find. There’s a solid amount in Codex Titanicus, an expansion to Adeptus Titanicus. But sadly they never got a Realm of Chaos or Waaargh! The Orks to really delve into their culture.
Now, what’s out there now isn’t that far off. It’s just…I’d kill for a modern Waaargh! The Eldar.
Eldar are, I think, the crowning achievement of GWs creativity in terms of xenos faction design. They blend sci-fi, Tolkein fantasy, and "60's psychadelic-crystal" design together in a really special way both visually and lore-wise.
I agree. They're the only faction keeping me engaged with the 40k universe.
Their early background is harder to find. There’s a solid amount in Codex Titanicus, an expansion to Adeptus Titanicus. But sadly they never got a Realm of Chaos or Waaargh! The Orks to really delve into their culture.
Now, what’s out there now isn’t that far off. It’s just…I’d kill for a modern Waaargh! The Eldar.
There are the novels Path of the Eldar, which gives an excellent look into the ins and outs of Eldar Craftworlder culture. The only downside is that it's by Gav Thorpe and involves having to read through this awful story of a teenage level triangular romance
Their early background is harder to find. There’s a solid amount in Codex Titanicus, an expansion to Adeptus Titanicus. But sadly they never got a Realm of Chaos or Waaargh! The Orks to really delve into their culture.
Now, what’s out there now isn’t that far off. It’s just…I’d kill for a modern Waaargh! The Eldar.
There are the novels Path of the Eldar, which gives an excellent look into the ins and outs of Eldar Craftworlder culture. The only downside is that it's by Gav Thorpe and involves having to read through this awful story of a teenage level triangular romance
I'm not a big fan of those because Thorpe was the spearhead of trying to undo the 2nd ed background of the eldar, from the size of aspect shrines (being massive complexes ala classic kung fu movies with lots of students and teachers) to single dingy dojos with one leader, also devaluing exarchs to the crappy squad leader we have now rather than the actual reborn heroes of legend they're supposed to be, to the crapification of the shuriken catapult.
Thorpe's writing is very much in the 'marines are the protagonists, so eldar can only win temporarily or must die in the process' style, rather than allowing factions to have victories independently. The eldar have been continually flanderised into the dying race that is in decline to literally dying when they try to accomplish anything.
The only representation of eldar in novel form I actually like is Execution Hour and Shadowpoint by Gordon Rennie. Written from a BFG perspective, but with a great range especially in shadow point, the eldar were treated as protagonists that could win without having suffer for it. Those books though didn't tow the company line and aren't really available anymore.
IMO some of the reason eldar books aren't as popular is specifically because they keep getting written with the protagonists suffering and angsting all over the place. Perhaps if they tried writing a bolter porn eldar book where it's just aspects slaughtering their foes readers might pick them up more. But IMO it's the style of narrative rather than the topic of the narrative that makes it less popular.
The only representation of eldar in novel form I actually like is Execution Hour and Shadowpoint by Gordon Rennie. Written from a BFG perspective, but with a great range especially in shadow point, the eldar were treated as protagonists that could win without having suffer for it. Those books though didn't tow the company line and aren't really available anymore.
Been a while since I've read those but I got the impression the Eldar were just bumbling along through a timeline they couldn't predict and then an Avatar popped up unannounced and deus ex machina'd the last battle.
Their early background is harder to find. There’s a solid amount in Codex Titanicus, an expansion to Adeptus Titanicus. But sadly they never got a Realm of Chaos or Waaargh! The Orks to really delve into their culture.
Now, what’s out there now isn’t that far off. It’s just…I’d kill for a modern Waaargh! The Eldar.
There are the novels Path of the Eldar, which gives an excellent look into the ins and outs of Eldar Craftworlder culture. The only downside is that it's by Gav Thorpe and involves having to read through this awful story of a teenage level triangular romance
I'm not a big fan of those because Thorpe was the spearhead of trying to undo the 2nd ed background of the eldar, from the size of aspect shrines (being massive complexes ala classic kung fu movies with lots of students and teachers) to single dingy dojos with one leader, also devaluing exarchs to the crappy squad leader we have now rather than the actual reborn heroes of legend they're supposed to be, to the crapification of the shuriken catapult.
Thorpe's writing is very much in the 'marines are the protagonists, so eldar can only win temporarily or must die in the process' style, rather than allowing factions to have victories independently. The eldar have been continually flanderised into the dying race that is in decline to literally dying when they try to accomplish anything.
The only representation of eldar in novel form I actually like is Execution Hour and Shadowpoint by Gordon Rennie. Written from a BFG perspective, but with a great range especially in shadow point, the eldar were treated as protagonists that could win without having suffer for it. Those books though didn't tow the company line and aren't really available anymore.
IMO some of the reason eldar books aren't as popular is specifically because they keep getting written with the protagonists suffering and angsting all over the place. Perhaps if they tried writing a bolter porn eldar book where it's just aspects slaughtering their foes readers might pick them up more. But IMO it's the style of narrative rather than the topic of the narrative that makes it less popular.
Eh to a point that's just Thorpe being Thorpe though, whoever you are in his novels you get reduced to a conga line of incompetent buffoons getting slaughtered over the dumbest objectives possible with the dumbest means possible. In Path of the Eldar you have the hilarity of a Striking Scorpion getting punked by a tiny sliver of wood flying through his neck. In his Dark Angel books you had the Ravenwing deploying their bikes onto a space station and constantly getting into ambushes with Orcs. I'd remember more but his writing is so dry and bad that's all that sticks with me.
![[Disk]](/dakkaforum/templates/default/images/icon_disk.gif){kind=icon}
And +1 to the mention of Ork clan lists in 
