Mad Dok's thread got me re-reading the old rules and the old codex books, and there's so much to love in there. But here's the stuff I DON'T love, and I'm posting it so you can tell me what an IDIOT I am and explain to me why this stuff is actually awesome.
Off we go!
1. Faction variety: It's great that you get Genestealer Cults, Squats (a basic list, at least!) Chaos Cults and Imperial Agents ready to go. But no Tau? Only 4 units for Necrons? No Dark Eldar, just an admittedly cool Pirate unit entry in the Eldar codex? Fie upon that! So if I was gonna go back to 2e I'd want to make lists for those guys. Dark Eldar you can probably bodge out of the Craftworld list, but Tau are gonna have to be carved out of whole cloth.
2. Psychic Phase: It was cool, but it was broken as hell. And it required decks of cards, which makes it tricky for people who want to get into it. My solution: a dice based system like WFB 6th edition. Make some tables of powers, use the dice generation mechanic, and have the psychically resistant or null units have something like the Dwarf extra dispel dice rule.
3. Strategy Cards: As above, having this stuff on cards makes it difficult to replicate. But also, sorry, but I've always thought theses pretty much sucked. And the Tyranid versions are really fluffy, but as game mechanics, they also really suck. I'd just cut these from the game. If you want wacky gak the game already gives you plenty.
4. Wargear Cards: MOAR CARDS! Some of these I'd fold into the army lists as options for characters, perhaps limited to 1 per army, but others I'd just bin. Sorry, I don't like Vortex Grenades.
5. Datafex Cards: EVEN MOAR CARDS! I get that 2e vehicles had to communicate a lot of information quickly, and they did this by having these cards. But again, tracking them down or making your own is a pain, and makes list building annoying when you have to refer to them and you don't have them. Not sure that I'd go so far as the unified vehicle damage tables from 3e, but these are a pain and show how cumbersome a lot of the vehicle rules were.
So far, everything I have an issue with is something unrelated to the core rules. So let's throw a shot or two at those bad boys:
6. Fumble and Critical Hit modifiers: No, this just slows things down. A quick opposed roll with clear situational modifiers is fine, but no counting and then adding and blah blah, and oh I also have to count my opponent's dice too.
7. Templates that persist and move around: Not for general play, alright? Just too many weird interactions with terrain and getting bumped and so on. A template that stays in one place is basically fine.
2e fans, commence telling me why I am the wrongest man in Western Europe.
Wonders why you don't like faction variety... factions had to start SOMEWHERE - 40K has never been a tyranid, spawned entire....
I half get where you're coming from on more cards.... until I search the Warhammer store and find 218 items under "cards" and 30 under "40,000" cards....
Last but not least, some items/rules were completely over the top - but that was part of the wacky fun at the time.
And were quite a good example of 2nd editions need for co-operative game planning - scarabs were fast jump troops, 2+ armour, toughness 8, and forced attackers to use their base strength value ignoring all weapon modifiers making them immune to any unit without a natural strength of 5 or higher, so they could totally no-sell things like assault terminators, banshees, a full on charge from Ghazghkull Thraka, the entire sisters of battle codex at the same time, and so on...
Once you got more than a couple of scarabs in the same general area they also effectively disabled all shooting (a stacking -1 modifier per necron model). They were also entirely fearless, tiny (about the size of a 25mm base), regenerated if killed, and cost the same as a bolter armed tactical marine.
From someone whose rose tinted glasses make 2nd edition my fave...there was a lot, A LOT wrong.
IF it wasn't largely decided what types of lists would be used, which "advanced rules" and wargear cards and psychic powers would be houseruled or chucked out.
It was and is a huge time investment and in my opnion absolutely worth it but I definitely understand why many would prefer something different.
Stroller: I do like faction variety, which is a strike against 2e because it has less faction variety than later editions.
On Necrons: Yeah they were a White Dwarf list, as I recall they had a hilariously unbalanced battle report "Massacre at Sanctuary 101" where they tabled a really ill equipped sisters of battle army.
They were really powerful back then, Toughness 5 with a 3+ save, If you killed them you just lay them on their side and then rolled for them every turn and they could get up on a 6 or otherwise keep lying there, only perma-dying on a 1. Then they would run to the nearest unit and join them.
A marine for comparison was 30 points, necrons 44, they used to be more elite than marines. As it should be!
I had started to learn the game when 3rd came out, and I can't say I was disappointed with the changes. I could see the game had simplified many things but to me it seemed an improvement. Having squads with a facing made little sense beyond Napoleonic or ancient warfare, so seemed like an unnecessary complication. It was obvious that Herohammer was in full bloom during 2nd, so emphasizing basic grunts appealed to me too.
What really killed me was all the ridiculous dice combinations to resolve the simplest attacks. It was the bastard child of DnD come to life in Frankenstein's monster, with D20+D10+D4 etc, type shenanigan's for no reason beyond 'because'.
Admittedly, I never actually played a game during 2nd although the White Dwarf battle reports were entertaining.
1. The Cardstock. So, so many cards and counters. Psychic Power cards, psychic power deck, datafaxes, wargear cards, multiple sizes of blast marker, rad grenade counters. Lots and lots of and lots of easily damaged and or lost bits and pieces of varying ultimate necessity to the game.
2. Complete lack of FAQ/Eratta regularity. If it was broke (good or bad broke) it tended to stay broke.
3. White Dwarf additions. On one hand, I got WD every month because my parents had it on delivery from the newsagents. So I was able to keep up with releases. But if you didn’t? You risked missing out on new rules, scenarios, datafaxes etc entirely.
4. A pretty fixed game size limit. Yes you could (and I did!) play games of ridiculous size, but the underlying rules quickly became clunky much in excess of 2,000 points. In Defence? It’s kind of natural for a game’s popularity to spread sufficieintly that the collections of players begins to exceed the scope of the game. And people do like to play with all their models.
5. I was a Kid. Kids are skint. I didn’t have a Dreadnought, because I couldn’t afford a Dreadnought, until I was 17 in 1997. At that point birthday present was three, maybe four Dreadnoughts bought in a GW sale the week or two prior. But I for one struggled to afford the army of my dreams.
6. Probably more of a 3.5 entry, but here we go. A general lack of Compendiums. This compounded the whole “you really need a WD subscription” of 2nd Ed to keep abreast.
7. Warp Spiders. Get in the bin you evil beardy gits.
8. Sub-factions in Codexes…..with no commercially available models.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Hold on, gonna add some “in defence of” additions.
Bonus picture of me, right now, having removed my rose tinted.
Knickers, anyways it’s meant to be an image of that Observer dude from Flash Gordon with his goggles ripped off.
Ok, now I'm out of work I can address these points specifically:
1) Faction Variety:
Yes, there were fewer factions in 2nd edition but you're looking at it from the viewpoint of 30 years and 8 editions later, we arguably have too many factions now, and 10e will likely have way fewer factions than 18th edition. 2nd edition had as many factions as it needed
Bear in mind that army sizes were roughly half what they are now, so the chance of one army being able to do absolutely everything and cover all its bases was tiny. A terminator heavy Space Marine force played very differently from a Devastator heavy one, and every unit choice you made had a proportionally greater impact on your army's overall playstyle. Plus there were allies! remember those? so many combinations of forces you could mix and match in so many ways without as many restrictions as you have now, and auxiliary units. Plus army building in 2nd edition was a lot more fun than it is now. I mean c'mon, exodite dragon knights? autarchs? converter's wet dream right there. and all the wargear options (I'll get to those)
2) Psychic Phase
This really only got crazy with the release of Dark Millennium, which was its own box filled with cards and templates. Baseline 2nd edition didn't overemphasize psykers and the psychic phase wasn't crazy long or powerful. DarkMil was insane, but it was a good system! and having to allocate particular powers to particular psykers based on their power level was an extra layer of strategy. Plus we had powers like The Gate which added even more strategies. Yes, it was definitely slow as hell, but I'll take 2nd edition powers like The Gate and Force Dome over the bland "It's a weapon/it's a save/it's a buff" powers we have now.
3) Strategy Cards
Boy you really don't like cards, do you? I liked strategy cards (no surprise). Getting a number of them based on the strategy rating of your commander actually gave less combat focused, more cerebral leaders a concrete purpose. Some of them were nuts, just like psychic powers - Virus Outbreak was both notoriously powerful AND took forever to resolve) but once you weed a few of those out you have the core of a great system, and I like the tactile nature of cards, I guess someone at GW does too seeing as they started making cards for everything later on.
4) Wargear Cards
LOVE wargear cards! Sifting through a deck of them when deciding what to use to fill out a character, having the rules and the points gasp in one place? and a shared pool of generic wargear so you could tell some of what an opponent had just from the name rather than endless referring back to the books was fantastic.
5) Datafex Cards:
I mean these are just the precursors of what we have now, all the rules for something all in one place, including bespoke damage charts for each vehicle. OK it's no "snipe the driver" system from Rogue Trader but that is cool as all hell, if you can't keep track of your own cards that's very much your fault, and most of them were printed in the codex too (or WD for the ones released later, or in the box with the model for some of them)
6) Fumble and Critical Hits
Eh, not gonna die on this hill, but I will say the fact the game is smaller scale than 3rd meant you can spend the time for more detailed and granular rules
7) Persistent/moving templates
Smoke grenades driting around the battlefield, potentially cutting off your own lines of fire was fun and fluffy, vortex grenades randomly whizzing around destroying everything in their path was part of the consequences of using them. Persistent templates were the best kind of template, and an excellent opportunity to model markers
2nd edition definitely had its flaws. I didn't love how slow everything was, and game balance was basically just eyeballed, but in terms of fun and flavour and actually being excited to play a game of 40k, it's unrivalled, the level of customisation you could bring to your army was incredible and then for it to be replaced with the slate getting wiped clean with the grey blandness of 3rd edition (at least in its initial state) was just awful - along with finding out your army was worth about half of what it was.
This feeds into my opinion that it had a pretty firm game size limit. And it kicked in somewhat quicker than later versions of the same game.
Hopefully to be write large at the next phase of my Hobby Streak, as I start to turn my attention to my Eldar, starting with a 2nd Ed codex compliant army.
Da Boss wrote: I would say the limit is around 30 models, give or take. Above that it's too time consuming.
That is a physical limit to playing on a four foot deep board. Having ninety models in a guard army and enemy tanks facing each other across one city block absolutely crosses that limit.
There's someone complaining that third is worse than second because it was sales driven, second is so much better because third was ruined by greed. This is not true. Second edition was already that, it had already happened
It's curious to imagine that it was all envisaged from the start, because it wasn't. It was largely dictated by commercial reasons. I wanted to create a game where the opportunities for gaming were as great as a whole imagined universe, not that were confined to a tabletop, not that was confined to a tabletop where two equal forces on one side lined up here and equal forces from another lined up here, and they went like that [claps]. That absolutely was not on my mind. Obviously as time progressed, things changed. By the time we came to do the second edition of warhammer 40,000, that game had settled into something very different.
It was something that I think Bryan was very keen on, because I think he saw it as a way of selling more toy soldiers once the game had become established.
Da Boss wrote: 2e fans, commence telling me why I am the wrongest man in Western Europe.
You are wrong, it was perfect
Spoiler:
Unless you lost any cards
Or any of the specific custom to the game dice
Or you had gaps in your WD collection
Or you wanted to play a game over 2k points but you didn't have a 3 day weekend
Or your opponents were willing to take advantage of some of the more busted rules
Or you had to carry your entirely metal army anywhere
Or you had to call a game early because your opponent tried to get a whole squad of dudes to throw frag grenades and it took an hour to resolve all of the scatters, overlapping templates and stacked hits on dudes unlucky enough to be standing in the wrong place
Yes, it's true that RT was and is the definitive og of 40K, but it was too "open" for its time. 2nd edition established the form its taken since, even if it was overly "bloated".
I feel very similarly to the OP, 2nd edition could potentially be an otstanding game even today, if some of the points costs and damage output was tweaked, and some fiddlier elements removed or significantly changed to be able to resolve faster/easier. But if taken wholesale? I'd rather take RT wholesale in that case
In my dream of dreams, Elliot Hamer (of KT21 fame) would fall in love with 2nd edition 40K and re-create it for the modern times. A man can dream..
Da Boss wrote: 1. Faction variety: It's great that you get Genestealer Cults, Squats (a basic list, at least!) Chaos Cults and Imperial Agents ready to go. But no Tau? Only 4 units for Necrons? No Dark Eldar, just an admittedly cool Pirate unit entry in the Eldar codex? Fie upon that! So if I was gonna go back to 2e I'd want to make lists for those guys. Dark Eldar you can probably bodge out of the Craftworld list, but Tau are gonna have to be carved out of whole cloth.
There was at least one (possibly two) Dark Eldar lists in Citadel Journal, IIRC, but they were Slaanesh worshipers back then.
There are also various fan made codexes floating around for Tau, some of which are actually pretty good.
2. Psychic Phase: It was cool, but it was broken as hell. And it required decks of cards, which makes it tricky for people who want to get into it. My solution: a dice based system like WFB 6th edition. Make some tables of powers, use the dice generation mechanic, and have the psychically resistant or null units have something like the Dwarf extra dispel dice rule.
Strong disagree. Cards are awesome. Mooore cards, I say!
And yeah, the psychic phase was silly and unbalanced, but was also a large part of the attraction of 40K as it was a big part of what made the game different from run-of-the-mill scifi. Magic! In Space!
3. Strategy Cards: As above, having this stuff on cards makes it difficult to replicate. But also, sorry, but I've always thought theses pretty much sucked. And the Tyranid versions are really fluffy, but as game mechanics, they also really suck. I'd just cut these from the game. If you want wacky gak the game already gives you plenty.
Also hard disagree. Watching an opponent's face when you whip out that strat in turn 5 that causes their entire battle plan to crumble was just so much fun.
Except for Virus Outbreak, of course, which even GW admitted was poorly thought out and should never have been included to begin with.
4. Wargear Cards: MOAR CARDS! Some of these I'd fold into the army lists as options for characters, perhaps limited to 1 per army, but others I'd just bin. Sorry, I don't like Vortex Grenades.
My eye is twitching, right now...
5. Datafex Cards: EVEN MOAR CARDS! I get that 2e vehicles had to communicate a lot of information quickly, and they did this by having these cards. But again, tracking them down or making your own is a pain, and makes list building annoying when you have to refer to them and you don't have them. Not sure that I'd go so far as the unified vehicle damage tables from 3e, but these are a pain and show how cumbersome a lot of the vehicle rules were.
I actually partly agree with this one... The datafaxes were handy to have on the table for tracking damage, but vehicle options should have all been in the codex instead of on the card.
6. Fumble and Critical Hit modifiers: No, this just slows things down. A quick opposed roll with clear situational modifiers is fine, but no counting and then adding and blah blah, and oh I also have to count my opponent's dice too.
They were, however, a bit of a leveller that stopped melee from being too one sided. Sometimes.
7. Templates that persist and move around: Not for general play, alright? Just too many weird interactions with terrain and getting bumped and so on. A template that stays in one place is basically fine.
But... but... vortex!
I do think some templates needed to go away faster... It was really easy to wind up with waaaay too much smoke on the table.
4) Wargear Cards
LOVE wargear cards! Sifting through a deck of them when deciding what to use to fill out a character, having the rules and the points gasp in one place? and a shared pool of generic wargear so you could tell some of what an opponent had just from the name rather than endless referring back to the books was fantastic.
Also, fun outcomes from the Special Issue strategy card... I still remember the one glorious battle that my Chaplain had his legs replaced with a Gyroscopic Monowheel...
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: 4. A pretty fixed game size limit. Yes you could (and I did!) play games of ridiculous size, but the underlying rules quickly became clunky much in excess of 2,000 points. In Defence? It’s kind of natural for a game’s popularity to spread sufficieintly that the collections of players begins to exceed the scope of the game. And people do like to play with all their models.
A couple of friends and I were regularly playing 5000 - 10000 point games by the end of 2nd edition. And when 3rd ed was released, my housemate and I saw off 2nd Ed by just putting everything we owned on the table and duking it out. I think it came out to something like 26 000 points on each side, and took us two weeks to finish the game...
5. I was a Kid. Kids are skint. I didn’t have a Dreadnought, because I couldn’t afford a Dreadnought, until I was 17 in 1997. At that point birthday present was three, maybe four Dreadnoughts bought in a GW sale the week or two prior. But I for one struggled to afford the army of my dreams.
Right after I started, one of GW's periodic price hikes jumped the dreadnought up to almost double its price... So I made my own out of cardboard.
(Missile Launcher was added later... that guy was originally twin heavy plasma!)
They were rubbish, as scratchbuilds go, and my designs were hampered somewhat by having to eyebalkl measurements from white dwarf as I had never seen the actual model in person at that point... but they served me well for many years, ever after I finally got the metal version.
I like the Psyker aspect of 40K as well, but I think needing to have large decks of cards makes it inaccessible and I think the way it worked in 2nd really incentivised taking a level 4 psyker if you could. I prefer the dice based mechanics of the 6th edition magic phase, if I was gonna bodge my own version of 2e I would nick that.
Same problem for all the card stuff really - lots to keep track of, and hard to get into the game without them, at the very least involves a lot of stick and paste. I do agree that if you're gonna have granular vehicles like in 2e that datafaxes (fexes?) are the way to go, but I'd definitely "de-vehicle" a few of them like Bikes in particular, so you could run a bike squad without it taking over the entire game. Also, some monstrous creatures getting a similar treatment would be cool - Warlords of Erehwon has a similar system to 40K vehicles for big monsters. Rather than making vehicles like monsters as in latter editions of 40K or OPR, they've made monsters more like vehicles were in old editions, it's an interesting choice.
With strategy cards, I reckon we'll just have to disagree. I see what they were going for but I think that style of game is better managed by having a neutral party give both armies their objectives, and having said objectives secret from each other. It feels better to me that way.
I had some pretty huge weekend games of 2e 40K as a teenager too. I think I had 4 or so friends round and we played 40K for a whole weekend, just one long multiplayer game. It remains a very fond memory!
Love your Dread btw. We all need a bit more scratchbuilding in our hobby!
Da Boss wrote: I like the Psyker aspect of 40K as well, but I think needing to have large decks of cards makes it inaccessible and I think the way it worked in 2nd really incentivised taking a level 4 psyker if you could. I prefer the dice based mechanics of the 6th edition magic phase, if I was gonna bodge my own version of 2e I would nick that.
Same problem for all the card stuff really - lots to keep track of, and hard to get into the game without them, at the very least involves a lot of stick and paste.
You should invest in a printer that can print on cardstock.
tauist wrote: Yes, it's true that RT was and is the definitive og of 40K, but it was too "open" for its time. 2nd edition established the form its taken since, even if it was overly "bloated".
I feel very similarly to the OP, 2nd edition could potentially be an otstanding game even today, if some of the points costs and damage output was tweaked, and some fiddlier elements removed or significantly changed to be able to resolve faster/easier. But if taken wholesale? I'd rather take RT wholesale in that case
In my dream of dreams, Elliot Hamer (of KT21 fame) would fall in love with 2nd edition 40K and re-create it for the modern times. A man can dream..
That was basically what Necromunda was, with added campaign and out of game rules, and yeah, the Community Edition is still a great game. The new GW edition... not so much, IMHO >_>
In my dream of dreams, Elliot Hamer (of KT21 fame) would fall in love with 2nd edition 40K and re-create it for the modern times. A man can dream..
Is he the guy who implemented the triangle, circle, pentagon movement distances and took out list building?
I see you have not played KT21. The distances are colors, not shapes (the shapes were added to the game in post by corporate mooks), and list building is very much a thing in KT21. You just dont pay points for anything other than extra equipment, but there are still plenty of restrictions on what you can bring.
tauist wrote: Yes, it's true that RT was and is the definitive og of 40K, but it was too "open" for its time. 2nd edition established the form its taken since, even if it was overly "bloated".
I feel very similarly to the OP, 2nd edition could potentially be an otstanding game even today, if some of the points costs and damage output was tweaked, and some fiddlier elements removed or significantly changed to be able to resolve faster/easier. But if taken wholesale? I'd rather take RT wholesale in that case
In my dream of dreams, Elliot Hamer (of KT21 fame) would fall in love with 2nd edition 40K and re-create it for the modern times. A man can dream..
There's link in my sig to the consensus rules developed years ago on Warseer. Turned out a bunch of us were already using them and so I wrote it down and added my own gloss.
TL;DR version:
Use basic psyker rules, not DM.
Persistent templates last one game turn.
No scatter for jump packs, models don't catch fire.
CC is resolved with single modified opposed die roll.
No virus grenade, vortex by mutual agreement 1 per side
Minor list mods for greater flexibility
So yeah, some funny stuff goes away, but you can get in bigger games in less time, which we like. The one die roll for CC really speeds things up. It's crazy how much time is spend rolling dice, sorting dice, re-rolling and resorting.
2nd had flaws, but the core was solid and the fixes were pretty easy and obvious IMO.
I see you have not played KT21. The distances are colors, not shapes (the shapes were added to the game in post by corporate mooks), and list building is very much a thing in KT21. You just dont pay points for anything other than extra equipment, but there are still plenty of restrictions on what you can bring.
You're right. The kindergarten colors/shapes thing and the fixed teams were complete turnoffs. When the Eldar could choose to take two fire teams of Guardians, Storm Guardians, Rangers or Dire Avengers instead of a proper kill team like in KT18 I noped on out. So I don't find your suggestion that 2nd Edition get reworked by the guy responsible for those changes to be an inspired recommendation.
1. The Cardstock. So, so many cards and counters. Psychic Power cards, psychic power deck, datafaxes, wargear cards, multiple sizes of blast marker, rad grenade counters. Lots and lots of and lots of easily damaged and or lost bits and pieces of varying ultimate necessity to the game.
See, I go the other way. Anything on cardstock was usually ok for me, it was the complexity outside of the cardstock that got me. Individually scattering each and every assault marine every time they jumped for example. We quickly house ruled that to a single scatter roll for the whole squad. I liked choosing Psychic powers, and "random" power generation through force cards But 2E felt more like an RPG where your army was your "character" compared to a strategy game.
all those cards for you vehicles, equipment and psycic cards, fun item, a protectif field that displaced the user when you hit them. with a little luck you could displace him off table, votex grenades that removed every thing it moved over. Orcs where hillarius and genestealer had a rule "jhones is actinf strange" it was a pregame thing you had to roll on a table for every unit of the enemy's army.
Plasma Grenades are another example of game slowing oddness.
See, their markers persisted. And could move, shrink or expand in the end-turn phase. All of them.
They were pretty useful weapons, but man the logistics of using them was pretty discouraging!
Vortex Grenades were also fond of moving, and I have a particularly fond memory of a Chief Librarian being chased by a hungry Vortex. Presumably to “Yakkety Sax”.
Vortex Grenades took a hiatus in our group for a while when we all discovered the Vortex Detonator vehicle card. It became a must-have, which largely rendered the grenades pointless, but was just as expensive as the grenade... and so we all just sort of agreed to stop taking the grenades so both sides could save the points.
The Vortex psychic power worked the same way, and was immune to the Detonator... but always ran the risk of a Daemonic attack.
insaniak wrote: Vortex Grenades took a hiatus in our group for a while when we all discovered the Vortex Detonator vehicle card. It became a must-have, which largely rendered the grenades pointless, but was just as expensive as the grenade... and so we all just sort of agreed to stop taking the grenades so both sides could save the points.
Same.
The Vortex psychic power worked the same way, and was immune to the Detonator... but always ran the risk of a Daemonic attack.
Ultimate power made those demonic attacks really bad, too. More than one Farseer met his fate because of that rebound effect.
I see you have not played KT21. The distances are colors, not shapes (the shapes were added to the game in post by corporate mooks), and list building is very much a thing in KT21. You just dont pay points for anything other than extra equipment, but there are still plenty of restrictions on what you can bring.
You're right. The kindergarten colors/shapes thing and the fixed teams were complete turnoffs. When the Eldar could choose to take two fire teams of Guardians, Storm Guardians, Rangers or Dire Avengers instead of a proper kill team like in KT18 I noped on out. So I don't find your suggestion that 2nd Edition get reworked by the guy responsible for those changes to be an inspired recommendation.
Gotcha. You're still bitter about losing access to your KT18 elites/commanders team. On all other counts, we will just have to agree to disagree
My review back then was actually quite charitable-with-reservations but now (after a couple years of Grimdark Future) I'm even less likely to pick 2nd edition back up again.
My overall observation is that late RT and 2nd Edition took what was a fairly good set of rules for warband to small platoon level play and then kind of ruined that by ballooning them up to company level.
This also explains why (IMHO) Original Necromunda is such a great game. It's essentially the 2nd edition mechanics at exactly the scope they are best suited for, without subsequent over-complication.
3rd edition tried to course correct but fans were hooked on RPG-like representation of fluff in rules and every subsequent streamlining of 40k has been shortly followed by layers of complicating special rules and such.
Gotcha. You're still bitter about losing access to your KT18 elites/commanders team. On all other counts, we will just have to agree to disagree
Not bitter. Never played commanders. It seemed like it was too much. Our problem was that we got in late. We started KT in mid 2020 during Covid. We never went all in as we were playing other games like Infinity. When KT21 was announced we were interested, but not for long. We had hopes, but GW being GW, those hopes were dashed.
I've thought of another one!
It always bugged me that everyone was by default armed with Imperial tech, and had to be upgraded to have their own tech.
Like, why were Eldar Guardians running around with Lasguns? Obviously, because they were originally armed with weapons kits made for Rogue Trader to allow conversions of fantasy models.
But it's not very good from a background perspective. 3e finally acknowledged that we had a proper model range now and moved the Xenos to having their own weaponry. I think that was way better for the character of the different armies. Orks with bolters was always a bit weird, since they were supposed to be these high tech weapons used by space marines, just ludicrously high caliber solid slugs suit them much better. Eldar having shuriken catapults as default just makes more sense and is cooler.
Eilif wrote: 2nd edition was the first one that I played. Though I only actually played a few games, the observations on this thread nearly all ring true to me.
A few years back I played a game of 40K just to remind myself, and even without psychics, vehicles and much of the other extranea, it was a slog.
My review back then was actually quite charitable-with-reservations but now (after a couple years of Grimdark Future) I'm even less likely to pick 2nd edition back up again.
My overall observation is that late RT and 2nd Edition took what was a fairly good set of rules for warband to small platoon level play and then kind of ruined that by ballooning them up to company level.
This also explains why (IMHO) Original Necromunda is such a great game. It's essentially the 2nd edition mechanics at exactly the scope they are best suited for, without subsequent over-complication.
3rd edition tried to course correct but fans were hooked on RPG-like representation of fluff in rules and every subsequent streamlining of 40k has been shortly followed by layers of complicating special rules and such.
Yeah Necromunda was 2nd edition ruleset done in a far better way to 2nd edition imo. 1st ed Necromunda with Outlanders supplement is my favourite game GW has done I think.
I loved chucking a vortex grenade into either a bunch of gaunts/boys and then needing to dodge the resulting insanity for the rest of the game was "fun".
Da Boss wrote: I've thought of another one!
It always bugged me that everyone was by default armed with Imperial tech, and had to be upgraded to have their own tech.
Like, why were Eldar Guardians running around with Lasguns? Obviously, because they were originally armed with weapons kits made for Rogue Trader to allow conversions of fantasy models.
But it's not very good from a background perspective. 3e finally acknowledged that we had a proper model range now and moved the Xenos to having their own weaponry. I think that was way better for the character of the different armies. Orks with bolters was always a bit weird, since they were supposed to be these high tech weapons used by space marines, just ludicrously high caliber solid slugs suit them much better. Eldar having shuriken catapults as default just makes more sense and is cooler.
It never bothered me. the technology of laser guns is going to be the same regardless, it uses the same physical properties. That's like saying orks shouldn't get tracks on their tanks, or that marines shouldn't have wheels on their bikes because it's special to someone else.
The game only made distinctions where the weapons were actually unique, like a catapult (there were no other equivalent weapons). But a gun that shoots explosive rockets or a laser gun etc, are the same regardless of who built them.
GW have crawled up their butts trying to invent new finer slices of effectively the same gun for the last 20 years.
at the scale of war we're supposed to be playing at, these billion slightly different versions of weapons shouldn't be visible.
so i don't see that as a problem. A plasma gun is a gun that shoots plasma, it doesn't need a unique profile just because someone else built it.
Racerguy180 wrote: I loved chucking a vortex grenade into either a bunch of gaunts/boys and then needing to dodge the resulting insanity for the rest of the game was "fun".
I never got into the Vortex Grenade thing, but I loved me some Thudd Gun Template.
Racerguy180 wrote: I loved chucking a vortex grenade into either a bunch of gaunts/boys and then needing to dodge the resulting insanity for the rest of the game was "fun".
I never got into the Vortex Grenade thing, but I loved me some Thudd Gun Template.
I had a couple thudds supporting my Squat bikes and trikes, good times had by all...
Da Boss wrote: I've thought of another one!
It always bugged me that everyone was by default armed with Imperial tech, and had to be upgraded to have their own tech.
Like, why were Eldar Guardians running around with Lasguns? Obviously, because they were originally armed with weapons kits made for Rogue Trader to allow conversions of fantasy models.
But it's not very good from a background perspective. 3e finally acknowledged that we had a proper model range now and moved the Xenos to having their own weaponry. I think that was way better for the character of the different armies. Orks with bolters was always a bit weird, since they were supposed to be these high tech weapons used by space marines, just ludicrously high caliber solid slugs suit them much better. Eldar having shuriken catapults as default just makes more sense and is cooler.
It never bothered me. the technology of laser guns is going to be the same regardless, it uses the same physical properties. That's like saying orks shouldn't get tracks on their tanks, or that marines shouldn't have wheels on their bikes because it's special to someone else.
The game only made distinctions where the weapons were actually unique, like a catapult (there were no other equivalent weapons). But a gun that shoots explosive rockets or a laser gun etc, are the same regardless of who built them.
GW have crawled up their butts trying to invent new finer slices of effectively the same gun for the last 20 years.
at the scale of war we're supposed to be playing at, these billion slightly different versions of weapons shouldn't be visible.
so i don't see that as a problem. A plasma gun is a gun that shoots plasma, it doesn't need a unique profile just because someone else built it.
Eh, I think there was a meaningful difference in 3rd between a lasgun, a hellgun, and a lasblaster. Assault meant a significant firepower and mobility boost over rapid fire in 2nd, so a lasblaster is noticeably better than the more unwieldy Imperial versions. Using the same principle is a weird argument. A bolt pistol, stormbolter, heavy bolter, vulkan mega-bolter, and boltgun use the same principle, but they are different weapons with different capabilities. A Salamander and a Chinera both have tracks, but one is quicker etc.
I think plasma is a poor example- Tau and Eldar plasma not exploding in the users face is much more in character with the factions than the Imperial version where they'll issue it to the next Guardsmen once the metal has cooled off.
The lasblaster was made because the change in grenades made the hawk's old previous identity (as bombers and grenadiers) impossible in the 3rd paradigm set of rules, and a lasgun would be too little for a jump pack rule.
So they took the name of the old wargear card to put on a weaker weapon.
I started 40k at the beginning of 2nd edition, just prior to the release of Dark Millennium. With just what was provided in the included starter box at the time ("Codex Army Lists"), I thought it was a blast, though games did take forever. Fantastic lore and art throughout the books and materials, with cool miniatures to match (they were still very expensive back then, but at least most models were actual solid metal, so I did feel I got a bit more money's worth when compared to plastics).
Once Dark Millenium was released, with its piles of additional cards, and a new card-based psychic phase, the game got messier (cards everywhere!), and once the individual codexes started releasing, it got a bit more out of hand. Insane space wolf terminators; hero hammer level 4 psykers, warp spiders tearing everyone a new one; bonkers stuff. While it could still be "fun," it was a bit of a runaway train in my opinion making for some crazy games (that still took FOREVER to play out . . .).
I skipped 3rd edition as I had just graduated college and was busy with other things in life, but did come back at the beginning of 4th edition, which I admired (and still do today). All of the rules in one book plus your codex book, no D&D dice required, templates standardized to just three, and a lot of streamlined rules in comparison to 2nd. Yes, the craziness was toned down a lot, but the game felt more like a tabletop wargame should in my opinion, and a game took a lot less time to play out.
Even with rose-tinted glasses, I'd still take 4th edition (and probably 3rd or 5th) over 2nd when it comes to actual playing the game. As to lore, art, and overall presentation? I'd take 2nd edition codexes and other materials any day. So much more color . . . (or "colour" for the Brits . . .).
Even with rose-tinted glasses, I'd still take 4th edition (and probably 3rd or 5th) over 2nd when it comes to actual playing the game. As to lore, art, and overall presentation? I'd take 2nd edition codexes and other materials any day. So much more color . . . (or "colour" for the Brits . . .).
This is similar to how I feel. If forced to play a not-original-Necromunda version of 40k, I'd probably lean into just-the-rulebook third edition. However, the old books I look through most often are definitely the 2nd edition codices. A definite nostalgia hit and a nice in between from Rogue Trader to what came after. However, as it stands my son and I are pretty dang happy with Grimdark for rules and acquiring the second-latest-edition codices for fluff, flavor and reference.
Da Boss wrote: I've thought of another one!
It always bugged me that everyone was by default armed with Imperial tech, and had to be upgraded to have their own tech.
Like, why were Eldar Guardians running around with Lasguns? Obviously, because they were originally armed with weapons kits made for Rogue Trader to allow conversions of fantasy models.
But it's not very good from a background perspective. 3e finally acknowledged that we had a proper model range now and moved the Xenos to having their own weaponry. I think that was way better for the character of the different armies. Orks with bolters was always a bit weird, since they were supposed to be these high tech weapons used by space marines, just ludicrously high caliber solid slugs suit them much better. Eldar having shuriken catapults as default just makes more sense and is cooler.
It never bothered me. the technology of laser guns is going to be the same regardless, it uses the same physical properties. That's like saying orks shouldn't get tracks on their tanks, or that marines shouldn't have wheels on their bikes because it's special to someone else.
The game only made distinctions where the weapons were actually unique, like a catapult (there were no other equivalent weapons). But a gun that shoots explosive rockets or a laser gun etc, are the same regardless of who built them.
GW have crawled up their butts trying to invent new finer slices of effectively the same gun for the last 20 years.
at the scale of war we're supposed to be playing at, these billion slightly different versions of weapons shouldn't be visible.
so i don't see that as a problem. A plasma gun is a gun that shoots plasma, it doesn't need a unique profile just because someone else built it.
Eh, I think there was a meaningful difference in 3rd between a lasgun, a hellgun, and a lasblaster. Assault meant a significant firepower and mobility boost over rapid fire in 2nd, so a lasblaster is noticeably better than the more unwieldy Imperial versions. Using the same principle is a weird argument. A bolt pistol, stormbolter, heavy bolter, vulkan mega-bolter, and boltgun use the same principle, but they are different weapons with different capabilities. A Salamander and a Chinera both have tracks, but one is quicker etc.
I think plasma is a poor example- Tau and Eldar plasma not exploding in the users face is much more in character with the factions than the Imperial version where they'll issue it to the next Guardsmen once the metal has cooled off.
The 3rd ed fusion gun was a travesty though.
All of your points though are post 2nd ed retroactive justifications for the existence of those changes in the first place.
2nd ed didn't have rapid fire or assault. It just had shoot and modifiers. Eldar with lasguns had the ability to move further and shoot better than guardsmen - swooping hawks flew and could get within short range to get the hit bonus (and of course their main weapon was their grenade harness anyway). The mechanical difference was in the core rules, not the unit rules.
Tau weren't in 2nd ed and eldar plasma consisted only of heavy plasma guns on gun platforms which removed the risk of the weapon to the operator and allowed them to fire on the move.
3rd ed removed comprehensive core rules that gave variety and started the trend of a threadbare core with bloated unit rules so people felt their stuff was more special than others. This created the run away effect of the billion bolter variations we have today, that are totally unnecessary.
Everyone apart from Choas plasma guns (and heavy plasma) were safe IIRC. Their mechanic used to be the capability to fire max power, but the weapon can't shoot next turn. I think they added 'gets hot' in 3rd edition because they didn't think players could track things in the game like whether a gun couldn't shoot.
The only two things I know, which would make 2ed unplayable in my eyes for any imperial player, is the fact that an Ork army was mostly worth no VP, besides a few characters and that it could stun lock an entire imperial army for multiple turns, and with the strategy rating it had vs imperials they would practicaly always go first.
The swooping hawk exarch being able to solo a practical infinite number of marines, without any interaction, at less then 1/10th of the cost of a space marine army was the other.
Everything else, that was good, was fun and powerful, but because everyone could do fun and powerful it balanced itself out, aside for the orks and the eldar.
Some stuff was potentialy OP. Like the guant list, but from what I was told, in my country there was exactly one dude who bought a blister of melee guants, and then recast 160 of them and was dominating other players.
But to me that is just funny. The other two popular armies around here, had to be popular for multiple cities to have stories about those armies, were untargetable
Wolfguard terminator bricks, that would cover the deployment zone in multiple gigantic sized cylcon rocket launcher templates, and IG who did the same by getting pre game barrage for every vehicle and upgrades.
Oddly enough, I have never heard about anyone playing "regular" marines. SoB were terrible and necron supposably were an army created by GW to anger anyone who bought multiple sets of powerfists, terminators, vehicles etc. Their scarabs, which weren't swarms but single models, could lower the tougness of vehicle, turn off melee and range weapons weapon, and 2-3 scarabs got in close to a vehicle even a regular necron could blow up anything. Nothing near what orks or eldar or orks could do, or even other armies optimised builds, but for regular people starting the game they were, again according to local folklore, the army that made new players quit.
3ed put everything on the head, aside for the eldar things. And somehow orks became super popular, so that today there are dudes in their 40s playing them as their only faction.
Da Boss wrote: I've thought of another one!
It always bugged me that everyone was by default armed with Imperial tech, and had to be upgraded to have their own tech.
Like, why were Eldar Guardians running around with Lasguns? Obviously, because they were originally armed with weapons kits made for Rogue Trader to allow conversions of fantasy models.
But it's not very good from a background perspective. 3e finally acknowledged that we had a proper model range now and moved the Xenos to having their own weaponry. I think that was way better for the character of the different armies. Orks with bolters was always a bit weird, since they were supposed to be these high tech weapons used by space marines, just ludicrously high caliber solid slugs suit them much better. Eldar having shuriken catapults as default just makes more sense and is cooler.
It never bothered me. the technology of laser guns is going to be the same regardless, it uses the same physical properties. That's like saying orks shouldn't get tracks on their tanks, or that marines shouldn't have wheels on their bikes because it's special to someone else.
The game only made distinctions where the weapons were actually unique, like a catapult (there were no other equivalent weapons). But a gun that shoots explosive rockets or a laser gun etc, are the same regardless of who built them.
GW have crawled up their butts trying to invent new finer slices of effectively the same gun for the last 20 years.
at the scale of war we're supposed to be playing at, these billion slightly different versions of weapons shouldn't be visible.
so i don't see that as a problem. A plasma gun is a gun that shoots plasma, it doesn't need a unique profile just because someone else built it.
Eh, I think there was a meaningful difference in 3rd between a lasgun, a hellgun, and a lasblaster. Assault meant a significant firepower and mobility boost over rapid fire in 2nd, so a lasblaster is noticeably better than the more unwieldy Imperial versions. Using the same principle is a weird argument. A bolt pistol, stormbolter, heavy bolter, vulkan mega-bolter, and boltgun use the same principle, but they are different weapons with different capabilities. A Salamander and a Chinera both have tracks, but one is quicker etc.
I think plasma is a poor example- Tau and Eldar plasma not exploding in the users face is much more in character with the factions than the Imperial version where they'll issue it to the next Guardsmen once the metal has cooled off.
The 3rd ed fusion gun was a travesty though.
All of your points though are post 2nd ed retroactive justifications for the existence of those changes in the first place.
2nd ed didn't have rapid fire or assault. It just had shoot and modifiers. Eldar with lasguns had the ability to move further and shoot better than guardsmen - swooping hawks flew and could get within short range to get the hit bonus (and of course their main weapon was their grenade harness anyway). The mechanical difference was in the core rules, not the unit rules.
Tau weren't in 2nd ed and eldar plasma consisted only of heavy plasma guns on gun platforms which removed the risk of the weapon to the operator and allowed them to fire on the move.
3rd ed removed comprehensive core rules that gave variety and started the trend of a threadbare core with bloated unit rules so people felt their stuff was more special than others. This created the run away effect of the billion bolter variations we have today, that are totally unnecessary.
Different ways of showing differences. But even 2nd recognised it wasn't all in the user statline. A bolter was better than a lasgun, for example. Melee weaponry was also much more granular in 2nd.
Personally, I preferred the level of distinction in 3rd. I like that Eldar gear is (generally) better than Imperial gear, but Imperial gear is generally better than equivalent Ork gear. I don't think that automatically leads to the slippery slope of increasing weapons variations that lead to 8th ed bolter versions. GW went down that path, but it wasn't as inevitable as you make out. Indeed, melee weapon variety was contracted until 6th edition where they added power weapon subtypes again.
Karol wrote: The only two things I know, which would make 2ed unplayable in my eyes for any imperial player, is the fact that an Ork army was mostly worth no VP, ...
That wasn't a thing. You could build Ork units to be small enough to not give a VP for killing half of them, but 5 model Ork units didn't live very long.
And nobody was quitting the game over Necrons. They were added in the last five minutes of the edition, and had 4 units. Very few people had armies of them.
Karol wrote: The only two things I know, which would make 2ed unplayable in my eyes for any imperial player, is the fact that an Ork army was mostly worth no VP, ...
That wasn't a thing. You could build Ork units to be small enough to not give a VP for killing half of them, but 5 model Ork units didn't live very long.
And nobody was quitting the game over Necrons. They were added in the last five minutes of the edition, and had 4 units. Very few people had armies of them.
What was stopping you splitting larger units into MSU? As far as I can see, only a handful of the specialised mobz were limited by Command choices.
Karol wrote: The only two things I know, which would make 2ed unplayable in my eyes for any imperial player, is the fact that an Ork army was mostly worth no VP, ...
That wasn't a thing. You could build Ork units to be small enough to not give a VP for killing half of them, but 5 model Ork units didn't live very long.
And nobody was quitting the game over Necrons. They were added in the last five minutes of the edition, and had 4 units. Very few people had armies of them.
You forget... The army that won the second International GT in 2nd ed was one do these Ork armies. You had was it a 50%? (maybe 25%) character allocation - Nob on a (think Nobz bike) bike with some kind of flamer or similar came in at under 50 points so gave 0vps. Have a mass horde of them and it became mathematically impossible to lose... We switched to units giving up their actual points to fix this.
Dai wrote: *monocle pops out* Sounds like bloody poor form to me!
You could get around it if missions were picked instead of random. Engage and destroy, one point per character killed (also helped against blocks of sub 100pt units like heavy bolter squats).
The only two I remember as being totally unscoring were tyranid spore mines (up to half the army) and Cypher (on a 4+ on 3d6).
It was a house rule though as by the book mission cards were random. Good luck playing bunker assault against zero bunkers while your opponent was scoring a point for every three greenskins in your horde their tyranids wiped out hand to hand.
You forget... The army that won the second International GT in 2nd ed was one do these Ork armies. You had was it a 50%? (maybe 25%) character allocation - Nob on a (think Nobz bike) bike with some kind of flamer or similar came in at under 50 points so gave 0vps. Have a mass horde of them and it became mathematically impossible to lose... We switched to units giving up their actual points to fix this.
A 50 point character still gave a VP when you killed it, just like any other character. And Nobz were assigned to squads, you couldn't just take over on his own. So this doesn't work.
You forget... The army that won the second International GT in 2nd ed was one do these Ork armies. You had was it a 50%? (maybe 25%) character allocation - Nob on a (think Nobz bike) bike with some kind of flamer or similar came in at under 50 points so gave 0vps. Have a mass horde of them and it became mathematically impossible to lose... We switched to units giving up their actual points to fix this.
A 50 point character still gave a VP when you killed it, just like any other character. And Nobz were assigned to squads, you couldn't just take over on his own. So this doesn't work.
Correct about the Nobz, but incorrect about the VPs.
In Dark Millennium there are revised VP tables, broken up into categories Squads, Vehicles, Characters, Vehicle Squadrons, and Support Weapon Batteries. The Characters chart says a Character worth 50 points or less is worth 0 VPs either wounded or killed. I think my Apothecaries were always suspiciously under 51 points. . .
You forget... The army that won the second International GT in 2nd ed was one do these Ork armies. You had was it a 50%? (maybe 25%) character allocation - Nob on a (think Nobz bike) bike with some kind of flamer or similar came in at under 50 points so gave 0vps. Have a mass horde of them and it became mathematically impossible to lose... We switched to units giving up their actual points to fix this.
A 50 point character still gave a VP when you killed it, just like any other character. And Nobz were assigned to squads, you couldn't just take over on his own. So this doesn't work.
Correct about the Nobz, but incorrect about the VPs.
In Dark Millennium there are revised VP tables, broken up into categories Squads, Vehicles, Characters, Vehicle Squadrons, and Support Weapon Batteries. The Characters chart says a Character worth 50 points or less is worth 0 VPs either wounded or killed. I think my Apothecaries were always suspiciously under 51 points. . .
The Nobz bike is a support option that seems to be a mob in its own right though. It is a bike + driver + a nob from the characters section. Nothing seems to suggest it needs attaching to another mob.
You forget... The army that won the second International GT in 2nd ed was one do these Ork armies. You had was it a 50%? (maybe 25%) character allocation - Nob on a (think Nobz bike) bike with some kind of flamer or similar came in at under 50 points so gave 0vps. Have a mass horde of them and it became mathematically impossible to lose... We switched to units giving up their actual points to fix this.
A 50 point character still gave a VP when you killed it, just like any other character. And Nobz were assigned to squads, you couldn't just take over on his own. So this doesn't work.
Correct about the Nobz, but incorrect about the VPs.
In Dark Millennium there are revised VP tables, broken up into categories Squads, Vehicles, Characters, Vehicle Squadrons, and Support Weapon Batteries. The Characters chart says a Character worth 50 points or less is worth 0 VPs either wounded or killed. I think my Apothecaries were always suspiciously under 51 points. . .
The Nobz bike is a support option that seems to be a mob in its own right though. It is a bike + driver + a nob from the characters section. Nothing seems to suggest it needs attaching to another mob.
Ooooooo good find! But it's in the support section not the characters one, probably counting as a vehicle? It's listed as having an Ork driver and the Nob, so it's not quite the same as an independent SM or Eldar character on a bike, and if they dismounted they'd be a "mob" of 2.
Edit: Looking at the Dark Millennium VP charts, a Vehicle is "disabled" if the crew dismount it, giving 0 VPs if the unit was less than 100 points, but if it's destroyed it's worth 1 VP.
You forget... The army that won the second International GT in 2nd ed was one do these Ork armies. You had was it a 50%? (maybe 25%) character allocation - Nob on a (think Nobz bike) bike with some kind of flamer or similar came in at under 50 points so gave 0vps. Have a mass horde of them and it became mathematically impossible to lose... We switched to units giving up their actual points to fix this.
A 50 point character still gave a VP when you killed it, just like any other character. And Nobz were assigned to squads, you couldn't just take over on his own. So this doesn't work.
Correct about the Nobz, but incorrect about the VPs.
In Dark Millennium there are revised VP tables, broken up into categories Squads, Vehicles, Characters, Vehicle Squadrons, and Support Weapon Batteries. The Characters chart says a Character worth 50 points or less is worth 0 VPs either wounded or killed. I think my Apothecaries were always suspiciously under 51 points. . .
The Nobz bike is a support option that seems to be a mob in its own right though. It is a bike + driver + a nob from the characters section. Nothing seems to suggest it needs attaching to another mob.
Ooooooo good find! But it's in the support section not the characters one, probably counting as a vehicle? It's listed as having an Ork driver and the Nob, so it's not quite the same as an independent SM or Eldar character on a bike, and if they dismounted they'd be a "mob" of 2.
But you see. . . that's the strength of the system though!
As a unit I think it's like the Eldar Vyper w/character unit, where you replace the gunner with a Farseer/Exarch. Except in this case the entry says you buy the Character and then upgrade the character with a Vyper instead of a normal bike, so you start out by buying the character in the Characters section, which would feel more like you ought to use the Character VP chart again. D'oh!
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: As I’ve wibbled before, 2nd Ed and that general era of “wots an FAQ, precious” is why I have such a mend and make do attitude to Wonky Rules.
Doesn’t excuse the rules being wonky of course. But it does explain why I’m happy to home brew and house rule.
Da Boss wrote: Mad Dok's thread got me re-reading the old rules and the old codex books, and there's so much to love in there. But here's the stuff I DON'T love, and I'm posting it so you can tell me what an IDIOT I am and explain to me why this stuff is actually awesome.
Off we go!
1. Faction variety: It's great that you get Genestealer Cults, Squats (a basic list, at least!) Chaos Cults and Imperial Agents ready to go. But no Tau? Only 4 units for Necrons? No Dark Eldar, just an admittedly cool Pirate unit entry in the Eldar codex? Fie upon that! So if I was gonna go back to 2e I'd want to make lists for those guys. Dark Eldar you can probably bodge out of the Craftworld list, but Tau are gonna have to be carved out of whole cloth.
2. Psychic Phase: It was cool, but it was broken as hell. And it required decks of cards, which makes it tricky for people who want to get into it. My solution: a dice based system like WFB 6th edition. Make some tables of powers, use the dice generation mechanic, and have the psychically resistant or null units have something like the Dwarf extra dispel dice rule.
3. Strategy Cards: As above, having this stuff on cards makes it difficult to replicate. But also, sorry, but I've always thought theses pretty much sucked. And the Tyranid versions are really fluffy, but as game mechanics, they also really suck. I'd just cut these from the game. If you want wacky gak the game already gives you plenty.
4. Wargear Cards: MOAR CARDS! Some of these I'd fold into the army lists as options for characters, perhaps limited to 1 per army, but others I'd just bin. Sorry, I don't like Vortex Grenades.
5. Datafex Cards: EVEN MOAR CARDS! I get that 2e vehicles had to communicate a lot of information quickly, and they did this by having these cards. But again, tracking them down or making your own is a pain, and makes list building annoying when you have to refer to them and you don't have them. Not sure that I'd go so far as the unified vehicle damage tables from 3e, but these are a pain and show how cumbersome a lot of the vehicle rules were.
Great job summarizing some of the good points of 2nd edition.
A big part of it's appeal was the fact the game was ostentatiously, vociferously broken and made no pretenses about being better than what came before. People took the rules as seriously as they took science class the week before graduating high school.
My Chaos Lord could run around in spikey armor that hurt you when you try to hit him, eventually he'd die and be replaced with a much more powerful Bloodthirster for your trouble. Guardsmen were meatshields and died as such, none of this stuff with orders making them effective at anything but getting in the way. Eldar could move shoot move charge move fight move move and then move, which is exactly how they are supposed to be played. 'Ere We Go was more of a guide to life than a Codex. Land Raiders were almost impossible to kill, just as their guns were almost impossible to shoot. Vehicles in general were hard to kill, nothing like a Predator with no guns rolling around providing mobile cover. And everyone had scratch-built models in their army made of pipe cleaner and deodorant canisters. Psychic powers often did something offensively useful.
The cards I could do without, and mostly did.
I realize we're never going to see that game again, but really wish it could be shared with the current generation. Totally different experience.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Which was great if you had a subscription. And your back issues were kept in order etc.
Well I think you've gotta admit that's a little more you saying "wots an FAQ, precious" than GW. When I showed up for game night I brought my Codex, rulebooks and any relevant WD that I expected to be relevant.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Which was great if you had a subscription. And your back issues were kept in order etc.
Well I think you've gotta admit that's a little more you saying "wots an FAQ, precious" than GW. When I showed up for game night I brought my Codex, rulebooks and any relevant WD that I expected to be relevant.
Good for you.
Unfortunately if one didn't buy WD, or get every issue, or know that issue x had such a faq in it....
Heck there was one shop in my area at the time that sold WHFB/40k - but they didn't stock white Dwarf.
Insectum7 wrote: In Dark Millennium there are revised VP tables, broken up into categories Squads, Vehicles, Characters, Vehicle Squadrons, and Support Weapon Batteries. The Characters chart says a Character worth 50 points or less is worth 0 VPs either wounded or killed. I think my Apothecaries were always suspiciously under 51 points. . .
Ah, thank you! I had a vague tickle on my brain about the 50 point character thing, but couldn't remember where it would have been from. Went back over all of the 2nd ed era FAQs and couldn't find it. Never even thought to look in Dark Millennium.
The Nobz bike is a support option that seems to be a mob in its own right though. It is a bike + driver + a nob from the characters section. Nothing seems to suggest it needs attaching to another mob.
As Insectum7 pointed out, though, taking it that way makes it a support option vehicle, though, and worth a VP when destroyed.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Which was great if you had a subscription. And your back issues were kept in order etc.
Still FAQs, though. On pretty much a monthly basis for most of the edition.
And for what it's worth, I never had a subscription, and was living on the opposite side of the planet from GWHQ in a time before the OZ edition of the mag was a thing, so there were approximately 3 and a half places in the entire country to buy White Dwarf without mail ordering it from the UK... and I still had every issue. I used to photocopy the FAQ pages and keep them in a binder for easy reference.
A 2000 point 2nd edition army would have half the models of a 10th edition army and take just as long to play. 2nd edition was halfway between 10th edition and kill team. If that's the size of a battle you want 2nd edition was the beat edition.
I would love to see revitalized 2nd edition rules say under the name rogue trader 2nd edition. Some players would prefer to play at that scale but more importantly it would be more accommodating to new players.
I would love to see revitalized 2nd edition rules say under the name rogue trader 2nd edition. Some players would prefer to play at that scale but more importantly it would be more accommodating to new players.
Have you tried Shadow War Armageddon? It's a pretty good port of the original Necromunda (2nd edition mechanics) into the wider 40k setting. Smaller in scope even (5-12 figures per person, no vehicles, etc) than what Rogue Trader became but it plays quickly like original Necromunda and has campaign and advancement. I still think that warband/gang sized games such as original Necromunda, Mordheim and Shadow War Armageddon are the best implementation of the basic mechanics from Rogue Trader and 2nd edition.
I'm not sure 40k ever recovered from having a set of rules that was best suited for a game like Necromunda and expanding them to army size without corresponding adjustments. Even when they attempted (3rd, 8th, 10th) to dial the complexity back to better fit a the larger game fans wanted, they always find ways to shovel back in additional layers of rules.
It's more about the way GW structures their rules and uses language as well as rebuilds them so often. As a result you end up with confusion because you've a slightly confused order of activation/importance when resolving rules that clash with each other.
Rule A says "always X"
Rule B says "always Y"
And when both happen and X and Y can't both be true at once you get confusion on which does happen.
This is in contrast to, say, Magic the Gathering where there's very clear orders of activation and a single set of terms for rules; GW even messes with this giving similar rules or even the same rules different names and terms. Heck it wouldn't surprise me if we often get different codex with the same rule written in different ways as an edition evolves and is released.
This is all further compounded by GW losing the ability to create logical information flows somewhere around 4-5th edition or thereabouts. Heck they can't even put unit stat cards in alphabetical order in the codex (since they've removed all other structures that they used to have like the Force Organisation slots).
The biggest weak point with GW rules has always been GW itself. From management to writers the system is not setup for success.
Overread wrote: Most of GW's layered rules aren't the issue.
It's more about the way GW structures their rules and uses language as well as rebuilds them so often. As a result you end up with confusion because you've a slightly confused order of activation/importance when resolving rules that clash with each other.
Rule A says "always X"
Rule B says "always Y"
And when both happen and X and Y can't both be true at once you get confusion on which does happen.
This is in contrast to, say, Magic the Gathering where there's very clear orders of activation and a single set of terms for rules; GW even messes with this giving similar rules or even the same rules different names and terms. Heck it wouldn't surprise me if we often get different codex with the same rule written in different ways as an edition evolves and is released.
This is all further compounded by GW losing the ability to create logical information flows somewhere around 4-5th edition or thereabouts. Heck they can't even put unit stat cards in alphabetical order in the codex (since they've removed all other structures that they used to have like the Force Organisation slots).
The biggest weak point with GW rules has always been GW itself. From management to writers the system is not setup for success.
Have you tried Shadow War Armageddon? It's a pretty good port of the original Necromunda (2nd edition mechanics) into the wider 40k setting. Smaller in scope even (5-12 figures per person, no vehicles, etc) than what Rogue Trader became but it plays quickly like original Necromunda and has campaign and advancement.
We went wild for it. Extra teams, loads of boards set up, etc. etc. then club had to move and went on hiatus and by time got new venue people were doing different stuff :(
We went wild for it. Extra teams, loads of boards set up, etc. etc. then club had to move and went on hiatus and by time got new venue people were doing different stuff :(
That sounds like a ton of fun. We played a couple times and liked it, but ended up distracted by other games. I made sure to pick up a second copy of the rules with the hope of someday getting folks interested again.
Since then, I've taken quite a liking to Space Weirdos as a great option for zany Rogue-Trader-universe warband skirmish, but my affection for the Necromunda mechanics remains undimmed (we started a Mordhiem campaign last week) so there is hope that SW:A may rise again.
Da Boss wrote:I was vaguely aware of Shadow War Armageddon, but I thought it was just another one of GW's overpriced and badly made board games.
It's 2e Necromunda with all factions?!
CRAP, I would have loved that! I think my local shop has some of the books in the discount bin, time to go bargain hunting.
It's not perfect. No where near all units are covered, and some of the later armies may be considered over-powered, but it's a good game. Also, if you're familiar with 2nd edition statlines and such, it wouldn't be hard to port over or make your own units.
We went wild for it. Extra teams, loads of boards set up, etc. etc. then club had to move and went on hiatus and by time got new venue people were doing different stuff :(
That sounds like a ton of fun. We played a couple times and liked it, but ended up distracted by other games. I made sure to pick up a second copy of the rules with the hope of someday getting folks interested again.
Since then, I've taken quite a liking to Space Weirdos as a great option for zany Rogue-Trader-universe warband skirmish, but my affection for the Necromunda mechanics remains undimmed (we started a Mordhiem campaign last week) so there is hope that SW:A may rise again.
Da Boss wrote:I was vaguely aware of Shadow War Armageddon, but I thought it was just another one of GW's overpriced and badly made board games.
It's 2e Necromunda with all factions?!
CRAP, I would have loved that! I think my local shop has some of the books in the discount bin, time to go bargain hunting.
It's not perfect. No where near all units are covered, and some of the later armies may be considered over-powered, but it's a good game. Also, if you're familiar with 2nd edition statlines and such, it wouldn't be hard to port over or make your own units.
Well that's got me interested! Was just going to ask if the Necromunda factions were also in the book but I believe I still have Necromunda and outlands laying around somewhere so I guess it wouldn't matter. I'm thinking about just picking up the books from Ebay. I'll gladly hold on to those until I get the chance to give it a go. I'd love to play a wild skirmish game again. I have about 30 Ratskins painted up and about 100 zombies I painted the other year, could be something there. I'll download everything tomorrow morning... if I remember too.
We went wild for it. Extra teams, loads of boards set up, etc. etc. then club had to move and went on hiatus and by time got new venue people were doing different stuff :(
That sounds like a ton of fun. We played a couple times and liked it, but ended up distracted by other games. I made sure to pick up a second copy of the rules with the hope of someday getting folks interested again.
Since then, I've taken quite a liking to Space Weirdos as a great option for zany Rogue-Trader-universe warband skirmish, but my affection for the Necromunda mechanics remains undimmed (we started a Mordhiem campaign last week) so there is hope that SW:A may rise again.
Da Boss wrote:I was vaguely aware of Shadow War Armageddon, but I thought it was just another one of GW's overpriced and badly made board games.
It's 2e Necromunda with all factions?!
CRAP, I would have loved that! I think my local shop has some of the books in the discount bin, time to go bargain hunting.
It's not perfect. No where near all units are covered, and some of the later armies may be considered over-powered, but it's a good game. Also, if you're familiar with 2nd edition statlines and such, it wouldn't be hard to port over or make your own units.
Well that's got me interested! Was just going to ask if the Necromunda factions were also in the book but I believe I still have Necromunda and outlands laying around somewhere so I guess it wouldn't matter. I'm thinking about just picking up the books from Ebay. I'll gladly hold on to those until I get the chance to give it a go. I'd love to play a wild skirmish game again. I have about 30 Ratskins painted up and about 100 zombies I painted the other year, could be something there. I'll download everything tomorrow morning... if I remember too.
Shadow War: Armageddon isn't an expansion for Necromunda. It is a standalone game that is essentially a version of 40k kill team built on the 2nd edition/Necromunda basic ruleset. It is intended for squad-sized skirmish warfare (initially in Hive Acheron on Armageddon, although they added other factions later).
Overread wrote: Oh agreed it works, but I'd argue that it works for reasons other than the quality/clarity of the rules
I'd love to see the alternate reality where GW in the mid-90s hired an editor and from 4th ed onwards, 40K new editions were just for refining and clarifying unclear rules and rebalancing to account for new releases. It would be interesting to see how much difference that would have made to sales and the size of the player base by now...
Overread wrote: Oh agreed it works, but I'd argue that it works for reasons other than the quality/clarity of the rules
I'd love to see the alternate reality where GW in the mid-90s hired an editor and from 4th ed onwards, 40K new editions were just for refining and clarifying unclear rules and rebalancing to account for new releases. It would be interesting to see how much difference that would have made to sales and the size of the player base by now...
Honestly 4th-9th (or 8th?) had more issues than just the rules going on. That was the dark ages where GW was against the internet and so forth and pulling back from a lot of the community driven stuff even at the top end. So rules alone might not have led to vast changes; but then again a big reason Warmachine grew was for its rules so who knows perhaps it will have suppressed PP early on. Heck maybe they'd have come out stronger having not had a huge rise and then fall of 3rd edition.
Some of the things we did if I'm remembering correctly
Models didn't catch fire from flamers. (Dead models removed from board, wounded and saved models moved to edge of flamer template)
Not sure what this facing rule is I've seen mentioned. Individual troops had 360 fire range, tanks had their normal fire-arcs (at least in our group)
Jump packs didn't scatter. (or if they did, it wasn't by much)
Any psychic power could be nullified during any psychic phase. So those powers that stayed in play, you could keep trying to nullify each turn. Adding force cards to your nullify increased likelihood of nullify success.
In 2k point games, you only had 3-5 units, maybe a tank. Because of less troops, even with dark millennium, turns didn't take all that long
I believe we drew strat cards at random and kept them hidden from our opponent until we used them.
Lugging around your army then wasn't as much of a chore as it is now.
I had one of these which 1 tray housed my 40karmy, 1 tray housed my fantasy army, the 3rd tray was dice and bits, the top was books and large models like tanks and dreds
Well that's got me interested! Was just going to ask if the Necromunda factions were also in the book but I believe I still have Necromunda and outlands laying around somewhere so I guess it wouldn't matter. I'm thinking about just picking up the books from Ebay. I'll gladly hold on to those until I get the chance to give it a go. I'd love to play a wild skirmish game again. I have about 30 Ratskins painted up and about 100 zombies I painted the other year, could be something there. I'll download everything tomorrow morning... if I remember too.
The original Necromunda books are good fun and nice to have on the shelf. However, for play, I'd skip them and download the "Necromunda Community Edition" from yaktribe.
Shadow War: Armageddon isn't an expansion for Necromunda. It is a standalone game that is essentially a version of 40k kill team built on the 2nd edition/Necromunda basic ruleset. It is intended for squad-sized skirmish warfare (initially in Hive Acheron on Armageddon, although they added other factions later).
I'd figured it wouldn't have the Necromunda stuff but thought there might have been a chance.
The important stuff is more that it would work as a resource and that "both games" are effectively the same game and cross compatible.
Well that's got me interested! Was just going to ask if the Necromunda factions were also in the book but I believe I still have Necromunda and outlands laying around somewhere so I guess it wouldn't matter. I'm thinking about just picking up the books from Ebay. I'll gladly hold on to those until I get the chance to give it a go. I'd love to play a wild skirmish game again. I have about 30 Ratskins painted up and about 100 zombies I painted the other year, could be something there. I'll download everything tomorrow morning... if I remember too.
The original Necromunda books are good fun and nice to have on the shelf. However, for play, I'd skip them and download the "Necromunda Community Edition" from yaktribe.
Very cool thank you. I am kicking myself for not having bought the second release where it was just the big book and no terrain from some time in the early to md 00's.
My buddy bought it and I'm not even sure if we played more than a few games. It's been a while ago.
Looking at Shadow War. It looks good. I'll probably chuck together a CSM squad for it. All the stupidly OP equipment options and team makeups I could ever want, all in one warband. Just like chaos was in 2ed I could probably get an entire warband out of like, 5 Infernus marines, so it doesn't really get cheaper as a buy-in than that. And it can even play in different ways with different marks, etc.
There was a tonne wrong with 2ed, but since I get my nostalgia glasses on about it (it was where I got into GW hobbying as a kid), I always remember it fondly.
I'm surprised GorkaMorka hasn't come up in this thread. You want zany happenings, odd rules, having to track a heap of stuff, and Necromunda just isn't doing it for you? Then do it with Orks, and whacky vehicles, and all the stupidity that entails. Same sort of scale as Necromunda, but more green. And green is best!
I recently discovered some 2nd edition battle reports on YouTube.
After looking at a lot of current model ranges, many directly fit 2nd edition, acknowledging scale creep.
Looking at my terrain collection and how much doesn't get used as I generally play the tourney styled games (lots of L shaped ruins) furthered my nostalgia.
I went looking and secured a copy of 2nd edition and Dark Millennium.
Once it arrives, some of us are giving it a go, just with current sculpts of the models.
I played this edition from its release and ultimately, when it was replaced by 3rd edition.
2nd ed was great in its time. I didn't find any of its rules particularly problematic at the time, though in hindsight, I think some of the newer rules are better. I'd say the biggest problem with it was not enough factions and not enough models in any of them, except of course for Marines.
In 2nd, Maines had subfactions with bespoke models and rules, and I'm not 100% sure other armies did.
There was lore telling us what the Guard, Sisters, Eldar and Ork subfactions were... There just weren't rules to represent that the way there were for Marines.
I think GW started flirting with subfaction rules for other factions via White Dwarf during 2nd ed, but it didn't become mainstream until 3rd (and even then, some factions were still left out of the subfaction development).
PenitentJake wrote: 2nd ed was great in its time. I didn't find any of its rules particularly problematic at the time, though in hindsight, I think some of the newer rules are better. I'd say the biggest problem with it was not enough factions and not enough models in any of them, except of course for Marines.
In 2nd, Maines had subfactions with bespoke models and rules, and I'm not 100% sure other armies did.
There was lore telling us what the Guard, Sisters, Eldar and Ork subfactions were... There just weren't rules to represent that the way there were for Marines.
I think GW started flirting with subfaction rules for other factions via White Dwarf during 2nd ed, but it didn't become mainstream until 3rd (and even then, some factions were still left out of the subfaction development).
GW only released army rules, so unless something came in its own codex it didn't have unique rules. Marines had 3 codexes and 4 army lists, but although they were subfactions in a background sese, they were separate armies in a rules sense - each codex completely self contained. Eldar were just eldar, although the harlequins were like an army inside the eldar army and could be taken independently, and we had exodite dragon riders and character as well. The orks had klan specific units, but they all fought as a single army. guard had veteran skills you could buy for platoons that you could argue acted as 'counts as' for the unique regiments, but they weren't separate units or armies nor were they 'catachan vet rules' etc. chaos was similar to orks, in having specific squads for the chaos god factions but otherwise fighting as a single force.
Sub factions were just paint schemes otherwise - the ultramarine codex acted as a generic marine codex and they specifically suggested building other chapters from it, but only as paint schemes.
Automatically Appended Next Post: EDIT:
I enjoyed 2nd ed but I think that it could have been improved while staying within the rules space it used.
Melee and shooting functioned so differently and melee took so much longer, i didn't really see any advantage to that, so would have been happier with simpler rules to bring melee in line with shooting, in terms of its time sink and impact on the game.
That's why i did a revised version of the game, mainly affecting how melee worked and integrating initiative into shooting.
Just to agree that the multiplicity of sub factions is really a feature of the last few editions.
They basically didn't exist in 2nd edition and in 3rd or 4th they were quite limited.
The limitation on sub factions is actually something I view as a positive for 2nd edition. My personal opinion is that adding layers of rules from sub factions, formations, etc, works against playability in favor of the sort thematic detail that really only benefits an RPG.
Yeah and even now the only real subfactions are Marines. Most other factions the "subfactions" amount to a pitiful handful of rule adjustments that often tend to just theme them around a specific tactical approach (ranged, close combat etc..).
There was that REALLY messy time when GW almost got to the point of enforcing paint schemes defining your rules when you could combine lots of different subfaction armies at the same time and everyone was running around with combined armies with ranged units in the ranged faction; close combat ones in the cc one and so forth.
GW has also flipped back and forth with a few subfactions in making them their own armies or not. Harlequins have done that as have Imperial Agents/Assassins/Inquisition. Or even mixing two armies into one new one (Eldar+Dark Eldar)
I do wonder if one day GW will end up doing what Infinity have done and fully splintering some of the Xenos forces into smaller subfactions fully. If just because the armies will become so bloated with model choices and optoins that they start to lose identity, but also start to become a hindrance to people starting armies.
In fact we HAVE seen that happen with Demons in AoS and we are "kind of" seeing GW set the potential ground work to do it in 40K too.
Tyranids in particular gained Hive Tyrants, Lictors, Biovores, Gargoyles and Hormagaunts. And Spore Mines. Their book also contained a rough and ready Genestealer Cult Force.
Chaos had a bit of everything, and introduced the concept of older models of equipment. Also the Daemonworld sub-list, which was pretty bonkers. And maybe a future project for me.
The limitation on sub factions is actually something I view as a positive for 2nd edition. My personal opinion is that adding layers of rules from sub factions, formations, etc, works against playability in favor of the sort thematic detail that really only benefits an RPG.
And I can get behind that- but only if they also gut BA, DA and SW.
Because either ALL factions get meaningful subfactions or NONE do.
This Marines are special gak has to end. FFS, they already have their own fething game that excludes everyone else. And yes, I know people who like HH will talk about Admech, Dark Mech, Custodes and Solar Auxilia... I know that "technically" it isn't an all marine game... But it's damn close.
And while 8th and 9th DID actually grant EVERYONE meaningful subfactions (making them my favourite editions of all time), 10th clawed all of that back, except for... You guessed it: BA, DA and soon SW. Each of these factions can choose any of the detachments in their own book, plus any of the basic SM detachments... So BA get 10 choices while Sisters get 4.
The limitation on sub factions is actually something I view as a positive for 2nd edition. My personal opinion is that adding layers of rules from sub factions, formations, etc, works against playability in favor of the sort thematic detail that really only benefits an RPG.
And I can get behind that- but only if they also gut BA, DA and SW.
Because either ALL factions get meaningful subfactions or NONE do.
This Marines are special gak has to end.
GW laughs in your face. Sorry, but "Marines are special gak" has been a thing since late stage RT. It's not going to end in your lifetime.
PenitentJake wrote: FFS, they already have their own fething game that excludes everyone else. And yes, I know people who like HH will talk about Admech, Dark Mech, Custodes and Solar Auxilia... I know that "technically" it isn't an all marine game... But it's damn close.
So you're salty about a game centered on the Imperium civil war not including A) Xenos, B) Factions that didn't exist at that time in the lore.
My only salt about HH is that they set "new epic" in it and that means no vast swarms of Tyranids or Biotitans :(
That said they are doing mechaniucm and dark mechanicum so I can make up for that with spidermechs....
But yeah Marines outsell every other faction by a VAST amount. It's no surprise that they get more attention and lets face it; it was really only the height of the Kirby era when GW got too hyper focused on maximum return on investment that Marines got a little silly and we had the whole mess with Primaris and Regular at the same time (and I get the feeling GW today really wishes they had one or the other not both at once in some ways)
Eilif wrote: Just to agree that the multiplicity of sub factions is really a feature of the last few editions.
They basically didn't exist in 2nd edition and in 3rd or 4th they were quite limited.
The limitation on sub factions is actually something I view as a positive for 2nd edition. My personal opinion is that adding layers of rules from sub factions, formations, etc, works against playability in favor of the sort thematic detail that really only benefits an RPG.
I think 3rd and early 4th were very subfaction focussed, but I think the subfactions were packaged in a way where they were bespoke variants with their own army list, closer to how distinct factions are presented now. The chief exceptions were the Doctrines and Chapter traits systems, which had more flexibility. Personally I preferred the 3rd ed approach to subfactions compared to the 8th-9th paradigm.
They are spending a tonne of time on building slight variations of the same models, and other non marine armies languishing.
I would have no problem with this if GW marketed their games as 'Pick your imperial PC and grab a box of NPC chaff to kill', but they sell their factions as equivalent. But they aren't. No non marine/imperial factions get regular novel releases, character variations etc. These are all part of the experience of having a marine/imperial faction; they are not sold as super special things only marines/imperials get, they're just 'new fiction, new toys for your faction'.
A new player seeing all this variety for marines and no official visible advice that ONLY marines get this is absolutely right to be disappointed and angry that they invest in orks to discover they get none of the support they saw marines get. They get none of the game immersion material or options.
GW are selling 2 different gaming experiences but they pretend they are the same.
It is pretty close to a bait and switch, using the marines as their poster kids and showing everything they get, but not telling you that only marines get that so if you pick eldar, orks necrons whatever the shiny glam you see in their advertising won't apply to you.
GW laughs in your face. Sorry, but "Marines are special gak" has been a thing since late stage RT. It's not going to end in your lifetime.
Oh, believe me, I'm under no illusions. But everything done to move the needle helps. Again, 9th came much closer to the ideal than most editions just by making subfactions actually matter to ALL non-marine factions. I know there will never be true parity, and honestly, I'm okay with that because I know that the truckloads of cash spent on marines in the past four decades are what has kept the company and the game alive where so many others have crashed and burned.
9th was close enough- especially when we got the extras in campaign books. There was an OoOML and Bloody Rose supplement, there were Armies of Renown and the combined armies (Torchbearer Fleets, Armies of Faith).
So you're salty about a game centered on the Imperium civil war not including A) Xenos, B) Factions that didn't exist at that time in the lore.
Well again, there are ways GW can mitigate this for me- I know the post you're responding to was written in a provocative tone, but I'm actually a pretty reasonable dude.
So for example, expand the SoS component of Custodes and make that stuff 40k legal. You know that cool looking new Admech mechadendrite tank? I'd really lay off the HH hate if that thing was legal in 40k. I whined considerably less when Spartans were easily used in 40k because I wanted one for my Deathwatch. And there's another even bigger thing they could have done to shut me up, but I'll quote someone else before I get to it:
Overread wrote: My only salt about HH is that they set "new epic" in it and that means no vast swarms of Tyranids or Biotitans :(
This right here. When Eldar and Tau models were released for Aeronautica, I almost bought in- the only thing that stopped me was that they borked the game to give us more HH crap before I got around to it.
Take the Epic scale game out of the HH era and I'll never whine about HH again. Or rerelease Battlefleet Gothic WITH ALL FACTIONS REPRESENTED and I'll never whine about HH again. Our give us a 40k Warhammer Quest game that isn't Marine-centric. Just do something other than sink us deeper in Xenos exclusion before all Xenos players simply abandon the game, because HH crap certainly sends a message that the company doesn't care about us.
I think 3rd and early 4th were very subfaction focussed, but I think the subfactions were packaged in a way where they were bespoke variants with their own army list, closer to how distinct factions are presented now. The chief exceptions were the Doctrines and Chapter traits systems, which had more flexibility. Personally I preferred the 3rd ed approach to subfactions compared to the 8th-9th paradigm.
And I also liked the way 3rd and 4th did it... But again, they weren't consistent: they didn't do it for Sisters or Nids (though the biomorphs they gave Nids were pretty good, so they can be forgiven for this). They didn't do it for 'Crons or Tau or DE either I don't think (though I could be wrong).
If 11th came out with subfactions for every faction using 3rd/4th ed methods, I'd support that... But again, everyone gets it or no one does.
I think 3rd and early 4th were very subfaction focussed, but I think the subfactions were packaged in a way where they were bespoke variants with their own army list, closer to how distinct factions are presented now. The chief exceptions were the Doctrines and Chapter traits systems, which had more flexibility. Personally I preferred the 3rd ed approach to subfactions compared to the 8th-9th paradigm.
And I also liked the way 3rd and 4th did it... But again, they weren't consistent: they didn't do it for Sisters or Nids (though the biomorphs they gave Nids were pretty good, so they can be forgiven for this). They didn't do it for 'Crons or Tau or DE either I don't think (though I could be wrong).
If 11th came out with subfactions for every faction using 3rd/4th ed methods, I'd support that... But again, everyone gets it or no one does.
I'd forgotten about the 'Nid mutable genus rules, I think that was similar to Doctrines and Chapter Traits for list variety.
I think the consistency could have been better, factions definitely got more list variants if someone on the design team really liked them. It also didn't help that some armies were really new- Tau were entirely new in 3rd, Necrons were at the tail end of 2nd, 'Nids really came into their own, and Dark Eldar were a new flavour of Eldar and largely a subfaction like Harlequins. A lot of subfaction lists also never made it out of experimental rules or just never reached any kind of publication (most notably the Alien Hunters codex that never arrived).
With that said, if you treat Dark Eldar as a new Eldar subfaction at the time and include experimental lists, I think only Necrons didn't get a second list of any kind. Tyranids had the codex list, seeder swarms (essentially drop podding in), and an experimental Genestealer cults list. Sisters of Battle had the rulebook list, a Chapter Approved list, Codex: Witch Hunters (these were each intended to supersede the preceding list, but these days it adds extra options) and the experimental Ordo Hereticus strike force list (drop pod nuns!). You could also argue Daemon Hunters and Witch Hunters were both Inquisition subfactions. Tau had the Kroot Mercenaries list (this only expanded one aspect of Codex: Tau, but I think it is a subfaction personally). Oh, I suppose Arbites didn't get a variant list, but they were a pretty niche army to begin with and mainly intended as allies.
Aside from Tyranids with mutable genus, definitely more limited than the 8+ flavours the main factions got (Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks, Chaos) but that did make some sense given the longer history and lore for these factions at the time.
To get back on track, there was nothing wrong with 2nd ed per se.
However it was still more in the 1st ed RT paradigm of RPG heavy elements, just without a games master. We need to remember that 2nd ed was literally the first edition that didn't require a mandatory GM to play, but still tried to cleave closely to the RT game design. Every edition since then has been some kind of move away from the that paradigm, simplifying, or redesigning things and certainly a push towards tournament competitiveness.
2nd ed had tournament play, but it wasn't really designed to be the bleeding edge of competitive play.
Wargames back to HG Wells' Little Wars have been about reenacting real wars to see if you could do better than the original generals. So there's a very different feel compared to the modern hyper competitive wargame paradigm.
Modern wargames have been influenced by CCGs like magic (not necessarily in game rules, but in competitive game style), pushing them to be about competing, over the shared experience of mutually working out a war scenario.
2nd ed was certainly pushed more towards the win, but it contained so many other elements to ENJOY that winning wasn't the be all and end all. When you strip enjoyable aspects from the rules to make them lean and competitive, the only thing you are left with is to enjoy the win. So if you don't win, you get less enjoyment. My most fond memories of 2nd ed weren't of winning games but of scenarios within the games, because they were so rich and told great stories.
I've found less stories told in scenarios as editions have advanced.
Hellebore wrote: To get back on track, there was nothing wrong with 2nd ed per se.
However it was still more in the 1st ed RT paradigm of RPG heavy elements, just without a games master. We need to remember that 2nd ed was literally the first edition that didn't require a mandatory GM to play, but still tried to cleave closely to the RT game design. Every edition since then has been some kind of move away from the that paradigm, simplifying, or redesigning things and certainly a push towards tournament competitiveness.
2nd ed had tournament play, but it wasn't really designed to be the bleeding edge of competitive play.
Wargames back to HG Wells' Little Wars have been about reenacting real wars to see if you could do better than the original generals. So there's a very different feel compared to the modern hyper competitive wargame paradigm.
Modern wargames have been influenced by CCGs like magic (not necessarily in game rules, but in competitive game style), pushing them to be about competing, over the shared experience of mutually working out a war scenario.
2nd ed was certainly pushed more towards the win, but it contained so many other elements to ENJOY that winning wasn't the be all and end all. When you strip enjoyable aspects from the rules to make them lean and competitive, the only thing you are left with is to enjoy the win. So if you don't win, you get less enjoyment. My most fond memories of 2nd ed weren't of winning games but of scenarios within the games, because they were so rich and told great stories.
I've found less stories told in scenarios as editions have advanced.
I started in 2nd Ed, coming over from playing historical miniature games (ancients and WW2 microarmour). I found 2nd Ed 40K enjoyable, but I also noted that it had a competitive focus compared to what I was used to. I ended up going to my country's first GT in 1997 with an GW Grand Tournament pack that placed limits on wargear and psychic powers. So my recollection is that 2nd Ed had a competitive aspect that GW was trying to endorse. They even called the dreaded Ork all-Pulsa Rocket lists "thematic" in their articles. Then there were the terror of Space Wolves Terminators all with Assault Cannons and Cyclone Launchers that closed out that edition. Good times.
I did prefer the game play of 2nd Ed to 3rd Ed. But we can't go back. Nice to think about though.
I think it's important to note that thematic and rich game play and balance aren't mutually exclusive.
I think that people have a tendency to conflate balance with competition, and then segregate competitive from thematic, taking balance along with it.
it's just something I've noticed as GW pushes harder on their tournament style of gameplay.
I will by no means praise 2nd ed unconditionally, it had plenty of issues mechanically. I just think that the qualitative experience of a game needs to be considered as much as the quantitative 'win' conditions.
A game can be mechanically perfect and uninspiring to play. It can be beautifully evocative and horrendously unbalanced.
I just don't think evocative and immersive experiences are mutually exclusive with balanced rules.
Hence my attempt at updating 2nd ed rules without changing the immersiveness.
No argument on your points, but the qualitative experience will vary. I think that 40K's success has been in establishing a lingua franca for gamers. Two close friends can play any game and have a great time win or lose. Two relative strangers rely on some sense of fairness. For me, the 40K experience has been being able to have games against all sorts of folks that I did not know outside of the game. I have made friends through the game, but having a game that offered us a chance to meet across the table for an enjoyable experience without too much negotiation was a huge plus.
2nd Ed had that, but to say that it was not competitive is off to me. The competitive aspect was absolutely there. I did love the low-troop density of those games, and I miss the days of each fight being an individual duel where one side did not get wiped because it went second.
Hellebore wrote: To get back on track, there was nothing wrong with 2nd ed per se.
I'm sorry you saw the faction/subfaction stuff as being off track rather than seeing it as the genuine answer to your question about what was wrong with 2nd that it was intended to be. I myself said the rules of 2nd were fine. If you want to play 2nd in the modern era, updating the core rules isn't what needs to be done to make that possible: what needs to be be done is just writing the dexes for all the stuff that didn't exist during 2nd, and therefore has no rules.
Update 2nd's core mechanics all you want- that still isn't going to let you play Custodes, or use all the models that exist for GSC now that didn't exist then. It's a genuine answer to the question, not a distraction.
However it was still more in the 1st ed RT paradigm of RPG heavy elements, just without a games master. We need to remember that 2nd ed was literally the first edition that didn't require a mandatory GM to play, but still tried to cleave closely to the RT game design. Every edition since then has been some kind of move away from the that paradigm, simplifying, or redesigning things and certainly a push towards tournament competitiveness.
This is truthy, but perhaps not entirely true: the first set of campaign books in 9th referenced a GM as an option for campaign play, but with every subsequent set of campaign books in 9th, a bigger and bigger role was carved out for a GM, and the RPG elements in Crusade absolutely CRUSH anything previously printed, including Rogue Trader... And I'm not just talking about progression, though it is one of the biggest RPG elements.
I'm talking more about the long term faction goals, whose completion is facilitated by Agendas which are not connected to victory conditions and often exist in dynamic tension with them, creating choices for the player like "Would I rather win this game, or allow this unit to redeem itself and undue their penitent vow?" or "Would I rather win the battle, or engage in a side mission that will win me more territory back home in Commorragh?"
So yes, 3rd-8th may have moved us farther away from RPG, but 9th then moved us further back toward RPG than even the original Rogue Trader... But it only did that for Crusade players, so if you ignored Crusade, you may not have noticed.
And while GW has butchered some core mechanics in 10th that would have supported more narrative play, they've kept the Crusade elements largely intact, which has at least somewhat compensated for the loss. Equipment lists might be so simplified now that people who like options are disgusted with the game, but for people who play Crusade, weapon upgrades, Blackstone gadgets and Crusade Relics give you back options that the core rules killed. Not the same options obviously, but options none the less.
I've found less stories told in scenarios as editions have advanced.
Crusade missions are also closer to the missions in editions past; more of them are asymmetrical, more of them incorporate environmental factors and more of them require unique interactions with objectives. And of course when you combine those with the Agendas and long term Crusade goals of your faction the missions become even more narrative in nature.
But yes, I agree with you that if those who want more narrative feeling games for some reason choose to ignore all that Crusade offers, yes, they will find matched play to be less narratively satisfying than 2nd-5th editions.
Dark Angels suffered hard. From having probably the best bikers and Land Speeders in the game, we got…..a 6+ Invulnerable. Oh, and we also had to share the Heavy Bolter and Assault Cannon load out. Deathwing got Fearless and could mix weapon loadouts, so they weren’t too naff. At least not when all Terminators got their 5+ Invulnerable.
Blood Angels? Here, have a load of perks and absolutely zero drawbacks.
Black Templars. Who are you? Who cares. Have a load of beardy rules, but you’re not allowed Psykers, because that makes such a difference in this edition.
Space Wolves? Not that familiar with their rules, but at least retained their unique unit identities.
Saim Hann. You can have loads of Eldar Jetbikes! Which are, unfortunately, nothing to write home about.
Ulthwe? Congrats, you get better Guardians.
Iyanden. Here, have unfettered access to one of the best and beardiest units in the game which most stuff can’t even scrape the paintwork of.
Orks? Yeah. Nothing for you.
Tyranids? Have some mutation rules, which we trust you not to abuse just to math hammer OH GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE.
Tyranids? Have some mutation rules, which we trust you not to abuse just to math hammer OH GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE.
Lol! Yeah the mutation rules were utterly and unreservedly without any attempt at balance. Fun sure, but you could just do insane things. You could even put a synapse leader into gaunt units; all venom cannon armed warriors (not just one in the squad) and loads of other bonkers stuff. Very fluffy but also so horrifically broken
Putting the Ld10 boost on your ickles completely removed the need to maintain Synapse, which in turn meant we saw lazy Nidzilla type stuff.
The same was also true of 3.5 Chaos. So, so many options. Yet most Daemon Princes were cookie cutter (S6, T6, Flying, Extra Wound Tail, Daemonic Visage).
Not universally of course. But enough that I can see why GW removed such options.
Tyranids? Have some mutation rules, which we trust you not to abuse just to math hammer OH GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE.
Lol! Yeah the mutation rules were utterly and unreservedly without any attempt at balance. Fun sure, but you could just do insane things. You could even put a synapse leader into gaunt units; all venom cannon armed warriors (not just one in the squad) and loads of other bonkers stuff. Very fluffy but also so horrifically broken
Not seeing the issue with venom cannons? More than 1 per brood shifted the Warrior brood into heavy support for a 20pt autocannon. If you had a warrior with 2 S7 venom cannons and BS3, it cost 59pts per model for 4 BS3 autocannon shots (with less range). The platform wasn't particularly durable at T4 W2 Sv5+, although you could spend another 3pts for Sv4+. Against a boltgun, that is less durable than 4 Guardsmen manning an equivalent pair of autocannons (for cheaper) unless you get the 4+, then it is a little more durable. Could also be instant deathed by any S8+ weapon, which the weapons teams could not in 3rd (just removed one Guardsmen).
Neither did most of the others. All the Eldar subfactions were in different books to Codex: Eldar. The Space Marines lists were in different books to Codex: Space Marines. The Imperial Guard lists (for most of the edition) were in different books etc.
The exceptions were the second Guard codex with Doctrines, the 2nd Chaos codex, and the Tyranid mutable genus. Everyone else had rules in a different book or publication for subfactions (except Necrons with no variants).
3rd out of the box
3rd with codexes
3rd with all the WD/supplements
These are completely different games.
I don’t know if there is an edition that evolved as much as 3rd. Maybe 7th, with the formations and creep.
Rogue Trader
Ridiculously experimental.
Probably fair.
My RT experience was just the core book and the red compendium. Nobody in my circle collected WD, amd the web hardly existed. So personally I was just playing a snapshot.
Started picking up WD myself near the end of 2nd. So was a lot more in tune with GW and change from that point forward.
Nevelon wrote: I don’t know if there is an edition that evolved as much as 3rd
The latter half of 4e appeared to be trying to rein in a lot of it, albeit from what Gav Thorpe said it was in anticipation of a fresh wave of supplemental books that never materialized outside of the marine books. I think someone at GW may have realised that they had multiple factions approaching a decade without releases.
Forgeworld of course continued on their merry way with book after book of supplemental 3e-style material - a half dozen different ways to mount or tow a flak platform, pages of specialist ammo (for example a 4e FW leman russ had a one in three chance of one or more shells that would enforce an automatic fall back move on any hit), etc, etc
Nevelon wrote: I don’t know if there is an edition that evolved as much as 3rd
The latter half of 4e appeared to be trying to rein in a lot of it, albeit from what Gav Thorpe said it was in anticipation of a fresh wave of supplemental books that never materialized outside of the marine books. I think someone at GW may have realised that they had multiple factions approaching a decade without releases.
Forgeworld of course continued on their merry way with book after book of supplemental 3e-style material - a half dozen different ways to mount or tow a flak platform, pages of specialist ammo (for example a 4e FW leman russ had a one in three chance of one or more shells that would enforce an automatic fall back move on any hit), etc, etc
Heh, those rules were very much for peopke who like saying "Load AP! GUNNER! traverse turret 60 degrees clockwise and engage the battlewagon! FIRE!" *Makes pew pew noises*
Given they were optional rules that also came with a strict downgrade to the basic battle cannon rounds I think they were a fun little addition. Defilers had a 4+ chance of getting the infernus shells
Hellebore wrote: To get back on track, there was nothing wrong with 2nd ed per se.
I'm sorry you saw the faction/subfaction stuff as being off track rather than seeing it as the genuine answer to your question about what was wrong with 2nd that it was intended to be. I myself said the rules of 2nd were fine. If you want to play 2nd in the modern era, updating the core rules isn't what needs to be done to make that possible: what needs to be be done is just writing the dexes for all the stuff that didn't exist during 2nd, and therefore has no rules.
I was going off topic ranting about the NPC-ification of non imperial/marine factions whilst GW bareface lying to new customers that they are all equally valued products to choose from. Hence my attempt to get back on track.
However it was still more in the 1st ed RT paradigm of RPG heavy elements, just without a games master. We need to remember that 2nd ed was literally the first edition that didn't require a mandatory GM to play, but still tried to cleave closely to the RT game design. Every edition since then has been some kind of move away from the that paradigm, simplifying, or redesigning things and certainly a push towards tournament competitiveness.
This is truthy, but perhaps not entirely true: the first set of campaign books in 9th referenced a GM as an option for campaign play, but with every subsequent set of campaign books in 9th, a bigger and bigger role was carved out for a GM, and the RPG elements in Crusade absolutely CRUSH anything previously printed, including Rogue Trader... And I'm not just talking about progression, though it is one of the biggest RPG elements.
I'm talking more about the long term faction goals, whose completion is facilitated by Agendas which are not connected to victory conditions and often exist in dynamic tension with them, creating choices for the player like "Would I rather win this game, or allow this unit to redeem itself and undue their penitent vow?" or "Would I rather win the battle, or engage in a side mission that will win me more territory back home in Commorragh?"
So yes, 3rd-8th may have moved us farther away from RPG, but 9th then moved us further back toward RPG than even the original Rogue Trader... But it only did that for Crusade players, so if you ignored Crusade, you may not have noticed.
And while GW has butchered some core mechanics in 10th that would have supported more narrative play, they've kept the Crusade elements largely intact, which has at least somewhat compensated for the loss. Equipment lists might be so simplified now that people who like options are disgusted with the game, but for people who play Crusade, weapon upgrades, Blackstone gadgets and Crusade Relics give you back options that the core rules killed. Not the same options obviously, but options none the less.
I've found less stories told in scenarios as editions have advanced.
Crusade missions are also closer to the missions in editions past; more of them are asymmetrical, more of them incorporate environmental factors and more of them require unique interactions with objectives. And of course when you combine those with the Agendas and long term Crusade goals of your faction the missions become even more narrative in nature.
But yes, I agree with you that if those who want more narrative feeling games for some reason choose to ignore all that Crusade offers, yes, they will find matched play to be less narratively satisfying than 2nd-5th editions.
So, I should have been clearer because I forget people think that RPG=level up, which is not what I think of when I think of RPGs at all. Levelling up is a tiny part of the gameplay.
When I said RPG, I was describing how the game explored things like, hiding, being discovered, climbing, falling, ramming, detailed rules on things scattering and different affects. Levelling up your units is certainly something that happens in RPGs, but it is now so common a concept across lots of games that lack the meat of an actual RPG I rarely consider it.
So no, I don't think any later editions were RPG focused like 1st and 2nd were. Levelling up units sure, but that's not what an rpg is. In fact there are plenty of RPGs out there that don't have level up mechanics, but most attempt to model the universe as much as possible.
For instance, vehicle damaged was far more detailed.
Before I whimbrel, I will of course acknowledge they were smaller scale battles with typically far fewer vehicles. Anyways, WHIMBREL!
In 3rd - 7th? Oh, you’ve immobilised my vehicle. That sucks.
2nd Ed? You’ve blown off my track, and my vehicle has flipped, and suffered flashback to the main hull, which has killed a crewman. On the upside, I did just land on your dude, who takes full ram damage and just went splat.
If I hit you in your Leman Russ Sponson, and I was on your flank? That’s the sponson I hit, so that’s the weapon the damage is assigned to.
Turrets could be sent flying off (and in my experience had Character Magnets installed, for yet more squishing).
Now, as per my earlier aside? This did of course take time to work out. First, which facing am I in? Yes that lead to bickering. Then, where have I hit? Do I have anything which can adjust the roll to determine where I hit? If so, do I want to apply that? Right, now I know where the shot landed, what’s your armour value, you read that whilst I gather the dice for my penetration pool (stop that. Dirty boy). Then I roll, add them up, and if I beat your armour, then I roll to see what happened.
In 2nd Ed’s scale it wasn’t too bad for the most part. But in the modern era? Probably too much to be practical.
I was going off topic ranting about the NPC-ification of non imperial/marine factions whilst GW bareface lying to new customers that they are all equally valued products to choose from. Hence my attempt to get back on track.
So, I should have been clearer because I forget people think that RPG=level up, which is not what I think of when I think of RPGs at all. Levelling up is a tiny part of the gameplay.
I am not one of those people, which is why I wrote an entire paragraph about Agendas, which often require interacting with Objectives via non-standard Actions or achieving goals that are entirely separate from Objectives. It's why I wrote a paragraph about Crusade's missions, which are often asymmetrical and include story-based environmental effects. It's why I mentioned long term goals like Sainthood, Territorial control, or Redemption, which are all story-based.
And furthermore, while I do think the features I've listed above are more important to my personal sense of RPG-ness than formal progression, we've had this discussion before about "What constitutes an RPG". "Leveling up" may be a tiny part of some RPGs, but if you broaden the term "leveling" to "progression," what you will find is that virtually ALL RPGs, whether videogames, pen and paper or tabletop involve some form of progression. The last time we had the discussion, I think people found one game that didn't involve a form of progression, and they found three or four others that included features that resembled progression, but were also vague enough that they could also be seen as something other than progression.
In any case, it isn't the most important part of an RPG, but it's far from insignificant.
When I said RPG, I was describing how the game explored things like, hiding, being discovered, climbing, falling, ramming, detailed rules on things scattering and different affects. Levelling up your units is certainly something that happens in RPGs, but it is now so common a concept across lots of games that lack the meat of an actual RPG I rarely consider it.
Fair enough. Thanks again for the clarification- I agree that the disappearance or simplification of the things you listed above has occurred as a general trend, especially if you're only talking about the Matched play ruleset. Ninth had some actions, which are similar to what you describe, and Crusade (even in 10th) does give some of those things back via narrative missions, environmental effects and Agendas, but probably still not as many of the things you mention as previous editions, and I'd say 2nd in particular. The Parry/ critical rules in 2nd were pretty cool, and made combat itself feel narrative, rather than the consequences of the combat being the narrative.
It's why I have such strong memories of specific scenarios that happened within 2nd ed games, but my memories of later editions are about whether I won or not.
There are more things happening in the game to enjoy, the little details, little events that aren't directly related to the bleeding edge of winning the game.
I remember ganging up on a marine captain with a bunch of gretchin and having the last few actually win combat due to outnumbering. the imagery of them piling up on him was great.
I had a scenario where kharn the betrayer charged the front of my predator, destroyed its track, which randomly shot it straight forward instead of to the side and then he rolled a 6 on his initiative and got crushed by its flaming hull.
I've had bikes hit and then flip onto other bikes until the entire squad was destroyed by one another flipping onto each other.
I completely understand the need for streamlining the game and reducing the randomness to increase balance, but it shrinks the experience down to performing actions specifically to increase your win quotient of the game, rather than giving you enjoyable experiences within the game.
It's kind of a tactical narrative level vs a strategic narrative level.
The strategic level is more abstract and outcome driven, while the tactical level is more personal and detailed, which is where the stories are.
Rather than read through the entire thread, I did read most of the first page.
1. Faction variety- This was pre-internet. I was military at the time and it was cool to travel around and go to different places and see completely different metas and their takes on things. Stuff we had in our area was unheard of in others and I was amazed by what they found perfectly normal. This was despite there was only a few varieties of marines, guard and a few xenos. There was just a lot of internal variety. Hell, you could run an entire army of nothing but Wolf Guard Terminators with Assault Cannons. It was beautiful and deadly.
2. Cards- No more cards then than now. Psyker cards and mission cards needed to be out, but wargear typically was photocopied since we usually brought the same gear for our characters every time. I still remember my level 4 Chaos Terminator of Nurgle with a Lightning Claw, Daemon weapon(wargear), Combat Drugs(Wargear), and Displacer Field(Wargear). I think he came out to 355 or 365 points.
Some psyker abilities were a bit OP, some simply depended on the opponent. I remember a team game I was in where my teammate cast Plague Wind on our opponent's Tyrannid army on Turn 1. Literally half the army died and would have turned into plague bearers but we didnt have the models to sub in. I dont remember the exact wording but it was something like target unit had to take a toughness test for each model in the unit and each fail killed a model and was replaced by a plague bearer. Any unit within 6" of a unit that suffered a casualty makes the same check. And it continues. If you dont have plague bearer models then simply remove the casualties.
3. Games took as much time as the current game does. 2 hours or so. Smaller numbers of armies. My chaos army was 17 models. 2 HQ guys, 5 terminators, 5 vets, 5 havocs. It was also more deadly. I remember one game one of my Havocs with an Autocannon one shotted a Hive Tyrant, again, on turn 1 in a tournament. He is currently the commander of my 10th edition warband having moved up through the ranks over the years. I dont know if anyone remember nids in 2nd edition but if you lose the hive mind nexus your bugs wander off in random directions.
With these small of battles, you could have your mighty two heroes with ten dice each rolling for crits and parries and making it seem like a really cool fight scene. Or that lone hero getting gang banged by a swarm of khorne terminators beating the first couple but getting dragged down by the last few.(each guy after the first adds +1 to the final number).
Combat wasnt that complicated. In a very simplistic nutshell: Weapon skill 4. Roll a 4. Result is an 8. Your opponent WS is a 4 but rolls a 2 his result is a 6. You hit him twice. roll to wound, roll armor save, roll for damage.
Combat wasnt that complicated. In a very simplistic nutshell: Weapon skill 4. Roll a 4. Result is an 8. Your opponent WS is a 4 but rolls a 2 his result is a 6. You hit him twice. roll to wound, roll armor save, roll for damage.
But weren't ones critical fails and 6's critical successes, and couldn't some weapons parry?
And if you attacked a vehicle, couldn't you end up rolling up to 3 different die types to penetrate armour?
And then scatter and templates and sustained fire dice for shooting?
(Memories are hazy- two and half decades! I didn't mind the mechanics, to be clear- they were fine for their time... I just wouldn't want to go back.)
Where it got complex was there was no way to fast roll it, as it a given fighter could be rolling multiple dice.
The actual maths behind it was pretty straight forward, even with second and subsequent fighter bonuses. But man, it took time.
It also made Banshees sickeningly. I get the charge? You’re WS0, I still have my parry, and my all but guaranteed bucket of hits is hitting at S5 -3. Squads, characters, large monsters. Banshees could reliably chew through pretty much anything.
Yes. Given this is from memory.
LordA with WS7 and 7 attacks fighting another lordB with the same. A has a sword, B has a fist. Both roll 7 dice(I forget if the charger gets a bonus). A. 1,1, 2,4, 5, 6, 6. B: 1, 2,3 4,4 6, 6 .
A: rolled two 1s which counter both 6s leaving his highest a 5 total score is a 12.
B: rolled one 1 which counters 1 6, and A's sword parries the other 6, leaving the highest roll a 4. Total score is a 11.
Lord A gets 1 hit through.
If either would have gotten more 6s they could have countered the other guys 6s.
Sounds complicated but once you do it a few times its pretty easy. Once you figure some lords have weapon skill 9 fighting a normal marine skill of 4 you can see how easy they tear through them.
Also again remember, we arent talking mass troops like current 40k. My chaos army of 17 guys was 1500points which was a standard pick up point game of the time. I would expect it to last no more than two hours. My guard army still only had maybe 50 guys and some tanks. Most marine armies might have had 20-30 dudes at most and the above mele combat did not often happen since shooting was far more deadly than it is now. See the post above at how a single havoc with an autocannon killed a hive tyrant in one shot.
I thought it cancelled the highest roll. But yeah, a parry cancelled a parry I think in the rules. I am a little bit foggy, forgive me, its been 25-26 years? I just mostly remember the highlights and that it was rare to get big mobbed up attacks because of shooting being so lethal. I know my terminators were all Khorne terminators with twin lightning claws. I think the mark of Khorne gave them a +1 save to their normal 3+ save on 2d6. Supposedly that was FAQ'd but as I read somewhere, on the first page, no one had a copy of the white dwarf where that FAQ supposedly existed so it stood as written. Then again as everything had some sort of penalty to armor save even a 2+ on 2d6(and yes rolling a 2 was still a fail) happened quite often.
Assault cannons were the bane of everyones existance. I remember the outrage when I think it was blood angels got the Dreadnought at the tail end of 2nd that had two twin linked Assault cannons and everyone was complaining of how OP and broken it was.
Definitely force a re-roll. Hence I typically only parried if my opponent rolled a 5 or 6. Anything else, unless I was fighting with an already wounded Character, was too risky.
JNAProductions wrote: So, question: If you have one attack, WS 3, and roll a 1... Is your total 4? Or 3? Since it says the die is handed over.
afaik you basically don't count the die at all, your opponent does. So you'd be WS3 and they'd be WSX+1.
I'm not sure that mathematically it would make any difference though, two WS3 models fighting and one rolls 1 and the other rolls 1, they'd both either be CR4 or CR5. Or whoever didn't roll the 1 would win anyway. The aspect that was most important was the relative difference between the two, so combat result of 5 vs 3 means you won by 2 causing 2 hits.
EDIT: And for the previous discussion on parries cancelling out, that's also in the core rule right at the bottom of the outbox.
Where it got complex was there was no way to fast roll it, as it a given fighter could be rolling multiple dice.
The actual maths behind it was pretty straight forward, even with second and subsequent fighter bonuses. But man, it took time.
It also made Banshees sickeningly. I get the charge? You’re WS0, I still have my parry, and my all but guaranteed bucket of hits is hitting at S5 -3. Squads, characters, large monsters. Banshees could reliably chew through pretty much anything.
Really, the problem with 2nd ed close combat wasn't complexity, it was just the fact that it worked one pair of models at a time. So if you had big blocks of troops in combat, it could take quite a while to resolve.
On the other hand, that did have the nice bonus of sidestepping the need for wound allocation rules in close combat. You just hit the model you are currently fighting.
My answer to that was just to group the models in same weapon sub groups. so if you're attacking with a unit that has 3 pfs, 2 chainswords and 3 power swords, you roll each group separately and resolve against the whole enemy. Opponent removes causalties.
I dont remember ever having big blocks of units. I had a regular marine army but if I remember right I only ever used two 5 man assault squads. Again, its been awhile.
I did go page through my old chaos codex last night, wow that brought back some fun memories. I guess my havoc squad was just a standard chaos marine squad with 3 autocannons. That d6 damage though I found it amusing that Kharne has higher weapon skill than Abaddon. I miss being able to take Huron and then being able to bring any Imperial vehicle. That would open up many options in the game with my current collection.
I do remember back in 4th edition, two of my friends who never stopped playing 2nd(who got me into the game in the first place and were my groomsmen 10ish years later after this) came into the store and played a game of 1500 points blood angels vs dark angels while I and someone else was playing a standard 2k game of 4th. They finished their game a good bit before we did even starting after us laughing about how slow our edition was.
It is crazy to look back and realise just how small our armies were.
I of course can’t speak for anyone else, but for me part of that was….i just couldn’t afford much, being a school kid, at least at first.
Latterly I did expand my Dark Angels to a full, Codex Compliant Company (yes, with Rhinos!). But for most games, maybe 30 or so models, depending on loadout. Certainly a Jump Pack equipped Assault Squad with Nice Toys soon racked up the points!
Also probably worth pointing out your basic Tactical Marine was a hefty 30 points in his pants and Bolter. So even at 1,500, that’s a maximum head count of 50 if you somehow only fielded Tactical Marines!
I think I played most of my 2nd ed games with the core box blood angels and orks and later the space wolf army box they released.
That box was 30 marines plus the characters and bjorn, which was over 2000pts back then.
I added a few tanks, terminators and more blood claws as I went, so I probably ended up with 3000pts of troops to choose from, even though the games were rarely that big.
That was another cool aspect of the game, it didn't take long to have more than you would normally play with. so you could try different army combs. These days, the model count is higher and so are the prices, so people rarely have the luxury of a roster to choose from and kind of just look for the 'good' army lists online to build and stay with that. I'm sure they expand over time, but it doesn't seem like your roster gets quite as large in comparison re points to dollars.
Tyranids were something like 8 or 10 to a squad (I think - it might have gone up to 16?) whilst once we hit around 8th edition they were getting up to 40 potential gaunts per squad.
GW has actually pulled back in AoS and 40K in terms of model counts. Gaunts in Tyranids are now capped at 30 whilst in AoS their reinforcement system has really curbed how many big infantry blocks you can take.
But yeah armies today are way bigger for the same points values/standard game size.
There were also a lot more toolbox models back then, even if the kit didn't have all the parts, there were many more "this model does all the things just vary the loadout". This is something we've seen GW chip away at here and there and 10th feels like they've really cut away with a lot.
There's good and bad in that, but I can see why when back then most armies were pretty small; whilst today there are a LOT of choices for each army in what models to take.
^Hormagaunts and Termagants were in squad sizes up to 24. Genestealers and Gargoyles were were up to 12.
I thought the gants and gaunts were actually back down to 20 per unit this edition. I'm going off the Index as a I never bought the codex, but I remember realizing that termagants would max out at 120 this edition.
There were also a lot more toolbox models back then, even if the kit didn't have all the parts, there were many more "this model does all the things just vary the loadout". This is something we've seen GW chip away at here and there and 10th feels like they've really cut away with a lot.
There's good and bad in that, but I can see why when back then most armies were pretty small; whilst today there are a LOT of choices for each army in what models to take.
I think modern GW is keen on making you buy new kits to open up new tactical opportunities, rather than simple wargear/spell swaps.
Seems to be a silhouette/identification distinction kind of thing.
I recall this change seeming to happen around 5th, when they invented Sternguard, rather than just making them veteran tactical marines.
The current BS/WS mechanics don't help though.
In 2nd ed, a BS 5 veteran distinguished them from a tactical marine without needing a special gun.
It's interesting how rules limitations affect designs.
I remember when the plastic wraithguard and knight came out, they were in a phase where you had to replace a weapon to get an invulnerable save.
Then they decided that it didn't need to be a sacrifice and could be an invisible upgrade, and and so you've got this legacy design choice that hobbles the units.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Hormagaunts and Termagants were in squad sizes up to 24. Genestealers and Gargoyles were were up to 12.
I thought the gants and gaunts were actually back down to 20 per unit this edition. I'm going off the Index as a I never bought the codex, but I remember realizing that termagants would max out at 120 this edition.
Ahh yes you're right, its been a while since I last played this edition and yeah Gaunts are way back down to 20 per unit this edition!
There were also a lot more toolbox models back then, even if the kit didn't have all the parts, there were many more "this model does all the things just vary the loadout". This is something we've seen GW chip away at here and there and 10th feels like they've really cut away with a lot.
There's good and bad in that, but I can see why when back then most armies were pretty small; whilst today there are a LOT of choices for each army in what models to take.
I think modern GW is keen on making you buy new kits to open up new tactical opportunities, rather than simple wargear/spell swaps.
There's 100% GW wanting us to buy more kits; but at the same time customers also want more kits. You see a new edition of a codex and everyone is throwing out ideas for either replacements of existing models that are old; or ideas for new models they'd love to see. Some refreshes of old models that were once there and got removed; some FW alternate models and some just fully new ideas or things that other armies can do that they wish their army could do.
So you've got GW wanting to sell stuff and customers wanting to buy and personally I honestly prefer having 5 different models with unique appearances and lore* over having 1 model with 5 different weapon options. Even if you can use magnets to get more out of the model, the unique appearances and more diversity in a collection really makes it stand out more and be more exciting.
*yes GW I'm STILL very salty that you've stopped putting unit by unit pages/duel pages of lore into the modern codex!
2nd ed codexes will always be my favourite entirely for their lore forward approach and unit details.
I also really miss the outboxes and quotes, which added depth without requiring novels. Most of the modern 40k narrative plot hooks and cool bits are drawn entirely from single lines in outboxes from 20 years ago.
The introduction of the ctan star gods was probably the first very visible example of a random mention in an outbox being pulled out and expanded.
Random insane quotes from the nastier side of the imperium - 'why kill the alien? why not?', or 'an open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded', 'foreign travel narrows the mind wonderfully', were amazing flavour enhancers that you just don't see any more.
And so many cool concepts, like the 3 moons of the eldar homeworld referencing the 3 fates/lileath/morai heg/isha, the story of Eldanesh and Ulthanesh, the ORIGINAL story of the War in Heaven.
Looking back, so much of modern 40k was built specifically on Eldar background, nicking stuff to flesh other things out. The war in heaven used to be an actual war between the eldar gods and Khaine with a small role for the Yngir (assumed to be necrons/ctan). Now the war in heaven has nothing to do with the eldar, stolen to puff up the necrons.
I dunno if it’s Heresy allowing it, or me being a Sad Old Git wanting to take advantage? But once the Melee set is out for Heresy, my plan is to cobble together a Veteran unit, and then make a bunch of Unit Champions with different loadouts, from Very Fancy to Bare Bones, so I’ve a greater variety to choose from when assembling an army.
I’m also tempted to get sufficient MkVI bods to use up my remaining Heavy and Special Weapons. That’ll give me far more units than I can field - but again, Options.
I couldn’t properly afford that in 2nd Ed, despite owning a Company of Marines. Yes I had unit choices, but their loadouts were what they were. But I could have done so if my first job didn’t pay such a pittance.
I dunno if it’s Heresy allowing it, or me being a Sad Old Git wanting to take advantage? But once the Melee set is out for Heresy, my plan is to cobble together a Veteran unit, and then make a bunch of Unit Champions with different loadouts, from Very Fancy to Bare Bones, so I’ve a greater variety to choose from when assembling an army.
I’m also tempted to get sufficient MkVI bods to use up my remaining Heavy and Special Weapons. That’ll give me far more units than I can field - but again, Options.
I couldn’t properly afford that in 2nd Ed, despite owning a Company of Marines. Yes I had unit choices, but their loadouts were what they were. But I could have done so if my first job didn’t pay such a pittance.
I’m trying to think when it got “easy”. 4th? 5th? Probably depends on the specific option you wanted.
Tac squads came with a ML/F, chainsword/BP sarge. You want options? Go search. Special order bits, get metal blisters if you can find them.
Combi weapons were generally kitbashed or sourced off of specific named characters.
3rd still had hybrid metal/plastic heavy weapons. The dev box was only one each of some of them. People fielded a lot of MLs not just becasue they were flexable, but that’s all they had cheep and easy access to.
I picked up the grey hunter box in 3rd because it had the SW upgrade sprue which included a metagun (amoung other things, but that was the big one)
Heavy options opened a lot when we got fully plastic devs. We got more guns then bodies. So you shook one together with a tac box and doubled your firepower.
They started putting all the specials and a build a combi in the tac box. That helped a lot.
The old multipart commander kit was a goldmine,
Plastic sternguard was also a trove a bits to scatter across all the sergeants in your list.
These days I have a flexible shelf deployment for my company, plus a well stocked swap shelf of extra options. Assisted by magnets, but also a lot of full models. It does make it a little harder to tally the points in my collection, but lets me field most combos I would want.
I remember putting together an All Heavy Plasma Gun Devastator squad. The shoulder mounted ones so it must’ve been during 2nd Ed.
That, from hazy, hazy memory involved plundering the racks at my local GW, and a Mail Order to fill out the rest.
But that was 2nd Ed for you. You didn’t exactly have to sing for your supper, but you did have to work a wee bit harder.
For combi-weapons of course we had the Bitz Service. Which was very welcome, but the shift to plastic killed off. Not to mention paying someone to pick two or three bits with a grand total of maybe £2-£3 would hardly have been c cost efficient, Spesh as if I was ordering 3 of Azrael’s combi-plasma for instance, you’d have the left over bits from the same mould which would just….sit there, presumably.
The 3rd Ed Tactical squad was still fairly basic, and it would be a while before you really got options with it. Whilst stylistically much cooler, the 3rd Ed metal/plastic hybrids Devastators can go die in a bin if you ask me. Getting me to muck about with super glue on plastic with irritating weight distribution. FIE! I say! FIE!
Fully agree on the PITA of the hybrid devs. I’ve been at this for a long time, and they are definitely in the top 5 of kits that have left a mark on how horrid they are to build.
I’d try to pin them down to a more specific rank, but that’s a lot of trauma I’d need to unpack, and not in the mood for that.
With old metal kits if they didn’t need every bit from the casr, they could always just chuck the rest back into the scrap metal bin to be melted down again. Much easier to do that then try to recycle plastic or resin.
I have very little nostalgia for working with metal models.
I do of course miss some of the sculpts, but man, metal was a pain.
Some stuff (Space Marine Dreadnought) was nice and straight forward, thank to chunky contact areas. But then, other stuff had ball and socket joints, which just made me cry (like the War Walker)
In fact I’d say, the odd moulding issue aside? I’d rather work in Finecast over metal. Easier to drill into for pinning, and just took the glue better.
Odd molding issues aside? So besides that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Metal monopose sculps let them do things with pose and detail across the sculpt that would be hard to get the flow right with multi pose plastic kits. At the cost of fewer options. And the more 2D nature and other limits of the medium. I love my old metals, but am glad for plastics.
I had my Eldar dreadnought sit in the bits box for decades before my hobby skills advanced to the point where I could get it to stay together. Built a metal hive tyrant for a friend as his were not up to snuff. Heavy kits with tiny contact points are not fun.
I get the impression finecast worked a lot better in the climate of the UK than, say, Arizona. But it still wasn't great. Durability was very low for me.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’ve had pretty good experiences with Finecast, so only the odd issue for me.
I’ve had mixed, but will admit they were early in the roll out, before things were improved.
Eldar rangers were fine. Issues with resin on frail models, but that’s not finecast specific.
Fire Dragons were a mess of holes, bubles, and carving the detail out of gates.
SM sgt. talion and TFC were not bad. The cannon might have been better then metal, as I heard horror stories about building it, and mine was fine.
Sarigar wrote:I was talking to a buddy about all the conversion work we had to do to get the model we wanted years back. It was fun but also a bit tiresome.
To be honest, I do like modern kits and modern army design where finding bits and converting models to play a model/unit is no longer necessary.
I agree. I've always felt that conversions should be encouraged and optional instead of mandatory.
Sure I can also agree that some of GW's weapon loadout choices as of late are a bit extreme - eg taking away weapon combos that are done by combining parts from two official kits (eg winged hive tyrants with 2 sets of devourers); but I can see the logic in limiting loadouts to what comes in the box.
Which in all fairness is how most other games work.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I’ve had pretty good experiences with Finecast, so only the odd issue for me.
My experiences were always problematic. Early casts and late ones.
The issue for me wasn't just that errors would happen, but that they'd affect whole batches. It's not like regular resin where a bubble would often just be randomly in a bad spot and a new cast wouldn't have the issue - for me Finecast ran in batches so even when GW sent a replacement it could still have the very same problem in the same spot.
That and the rate was so high I just avoided the material outright. It he'd great detail, but it just wasn't reliable. The Metal that came before and the plastics after are almost 100% reliable and any errors are swiftly fixed. But the finecast in the middle just wasn't pleasing to work with.
There are other oddities in 2nd Ed. For instance, the Eldar War Walker had a fixed loadout of Lascannon and Scatter Laser. As did I think the Vyper. Those wouldn’t get weapon options until no later than 3rd Ed - but there may have been a later datafax for both which loosened that up.
But stopping myself typing Bright Lance there instead of Lascannon? I did, and still do, appreciate 3rd Ed giving each race their own weapons to play with, adding to their unique identities on the board.
Though there can be no, and will be no, forgiveness for 12” ranged Shuriken Catapults. It was a bad idea then, and it’s a bad idea now.
And not because they were horrific weapons in 2nd Ed, but because 12” on a rifle makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
I remember going to my first Dragoncon and seeing the Warhammer booth there. They had the bitz seller there where some common bitz were for sale but most were on boards and you filled out a sheet and paid and a few weeks later they arrived in the mail. It was so cool to me at the time. This is early 3rd edition so the internet existed but was still relatively in its infancy and dial up for the most part.
Nevelon wrote: Odd molding issues aside? So besides that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Metal monopose sculps let them do things with pose and detail across the sculpt that would be hard to get the flow right with multi pose plastic kits. At the cost of fewer options. And the more 2D nature and other limits of the medium. I love my old metals, but am glad for plastics.
I had my Eldar dreadnought sit in the bits box for decades before my hobby skills advanced to the point where I could get it to stay together. Built a metal hive tyrant for a friend as his were not up to snuff. Heavy kits with tiny contact points are not fun.
Not like a dreadsock is fun.
Ah, this takes me back. The third ed hive tyrant, the alien queen one, had a fully metal torso, head, legs and tail. It was heavy, and you absolutely had to pin it. And then in the upper arm sockets you had to place these really long and thin plastic scything talons. I was always worried that they'd break if it'd fall over, because of the weight.
Anyway, it took a dive from a dinner table at some point and exploded into its bits on landing. The talons were ok though!
.. oh wow, it's all coming back now. The 3rd ed zoanthrope. A giant fully metal head that had a tiny connection at the neck to the rest of the body...
Nevelon wrote: Odd molding issues aside? So besides that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Metal monopose sculps let them do things with pose and detail across the sculpt that would be hard to get the flow right with multi pose plastic kits. At the cost of fewer options. And the more 2D nature and other limits of the medium. I love my old metals, but am glad for plastics.
I had my Eldar dreadnought sit in the bits box for decades before my hobby skills advanced to the point where I could get it to stay together. Built a metal hive tyrant for a friend as his were not up to snuff. Heavy kits with tiny contact points are not fun.
Not like a dreadsock is fun.
Ah, this takes me back. The third ed hive tyrant, the alien queen one, had a fully metal torso, head, legs and tail. It was heavy, and you absolutely had to pin it. And then in the upper arm sockets you had to place these really long and thin plastic scything talons. I was always worried that they'd break if it'd fall over, because of the weight.
Anyway, it took a dive from a dinner table at some point and exploded into its bits on landing. The talons were ok though!
.. oh wow, it's all coming back now. The 3rd ed zoanthrope. A giant fully metal head that had a tiny connection at the neck to the rest of the body...
I was talking about the 2nd ed one, not the third. I have both these days, but the 3rd one came to me pre-built.
Overread wrote:Don't forget the original all metal hormagaunts that could NOT stand up on their own without modifying the base!
Tippy just drinks a lot and falls over. Don’t balance shame!
And for those of you younger then dirt, some pictures to illustrate some of the more fun metal models we are talking about:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: There are other oddities in 2nd Ed. For instance, the Eldar War Walker had a fixed loadout of Lascannon and Scatter Laser. As did I think the Vyper. Those wouldn’t get weapon options until no later than 3rd Ed - but there may have been a later datafax for both which loosened that up.
I don't know where you're getting that. The Datafaxes that came with Dark Millenium had more weapon options, as did the entries in the Eldar codex. Lascannon, Scatter Laser, Plasma Cannon, Shuriken Cannon, Missile Launcher. The only limitation is that the Vyper couldn't take a Missile Launcher, and the War Walker couldn't take Shuriken Cannons. The WW could double up on any weapon choice too, by my reading of it.
The Eldar Dreadnought (Wraithlord) could take a D-Cannon too, which was pretty cool.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Though there can be no, and will be no, forgiveness for 12” ranged Shuriken Catapults. It was a bad idea then, and it’s a bad idea now.
And not because they were horrific weapons in 2nd Ed, but because 12” on a rifle makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
I'll stand by the theory behind the limited range of the Shuriken catapult in 3rd because it was an Assault weapon, opening up the wielders to be a much more maneuverable unit in the end. They could fire twice on the move (Rapid Fire weapons could not, in 3rd), and Assault afterwards. Despite Eldar having the same move as Marines in the 3rd ed system, the Assault nature of the Shuriken Catapult meant they could take more actions in a turn than humans/marines. They could move, shoot more effectively, and then Assault. It actually made the Eldar capable of more meaningful speed than just having a +1 to their movement characteristic.
This advantage eroded quickly as editions changed, but for third I think it was kinda brilliant.
Insectum7 wrote: ^Hormagaunts and Termagants were in squad sizes up to 24. Genestealers and Gargoyles were were up to 12.
I thought the gants and gaunts were actually back down to 20 per unit this edition. I'm going off the Index as a I never bought the codex, but I remember realizing that termagants would max out at 120 this edition.
Ahh yes you're right, its been a while since I last played this edition and yeah Gaunts are way back down to 20 per unit this edition!
There were also a lot more toolbox models back then, even if the kit didn't have all the parts, there were many more "this model does all the things just vary the loadout". This is something we've seen GW chip away at here and there and 10th feels like they've really cut away with a lot.
There's good and bad in that, but I can see why when back then most armies were pretty small; whilst today there are a LOT of choices for each army in what models to take.
I think modern GW is keen on making you buy new kits to open up new tactical opportunities, rather than simple wargear/spell swaps.
There's 100% GW wanting us to buy more kits; but at the same time customers also want more kits. You see a new edition of a codex and everyone is throwing out ideas for either replacements of existing models that are old; or ideas for new models they'd love to see. Some refreshes of old models that were once there and got removed; some FW alternate models and some just fully new ideas or things that other armies can do that they wish their army could do.
So you've got GW wanting to sell stuff and customers wanting to buy and personally I honestly prefer having 5 different models with unique appearances and lore* over having 1 model with 5 different weapon options. Even if you can use magnets to get more out of the model, the unique appearances and more diversity in a collection really makes it stand out more and be more exciting.
*yes GW I'm STILL very salty that you've stopped putting unit by unit pages/duel pages of lore into the modern codex!
When it comes to Marines in particular, I'm gonna do a hard disagree. I like that the classic paradigm is just "marine in power armor with different equipment", and that you didn't have to buy several Dreadnoughts in order to get different loadouts. The Marines because it made conversions by swapping parts and equipment around so fun and easy, and the Dreadnoughts because. . . well there only needs to be one Dreadnought model, The Boxnought, because it's perfect.
Dysartes wrote: And yet still better than the ones that followed on the next version, due to not relying on a small plastic section to support the gun...
At that made them easy to magnetize.
I like the modern preds, but will agree that the middle ones are the weakest. They are not alone in this, aspect warriors say hello.
Dysartes wrote: And yet still better than the ones that followed on the next version, due to not relying on a small plastic section to support the gun...
The aesthetics are much better though, IMO.
Having never owned either I can't vouch for durability differences between thin plastic and a huge lump of metal superglued to plastic. The latter is probably better when pinned, but that is more modelling work.
Cap'n Facebeard wrote: I feel like Lord Damocles should join this conversation. On Warseer he built a complete 2nd ed Tyranid army, complete with swearing.
I love almost all of the 2nd ed Tyranid range, aesthetically... especially the Hive Tyrant, which is cool and distinctive in ways that the later versions did not manage to live up to. The 2nd ed Warriors, though, are hands down my least favourite models in the entire 40K range. They were a massive downgrade from the look of the RT-era Advanced Space Crusade plastic warriors, and an absolute cow to build and keep assembled. Ugly models in every way.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The Predator Annihilator kept the curved turret, but somehow looked even worse.
Not sure if it’s just everything being….chunky, or the fact the Turret is mounted so far forward, giving a lopsided look.
The turret being forward was a large part of the problem with both of the hybrid models, along with the heavy riveting looking out of place against the plastic hull, but the annihilator makes it worse because the turret design also just doesn't match the sponsons. It looks like a vehicle cobbled together from spare parts.
I would be curious as to what the reasoning was with replacing the RT-era kit with the hybrid models. The similar vintage battlewagon and land raider kits were supposedly dropped from the range because the moulds were damaged. I don't recall ever hearing anything similar about the predator sprue, but it seems like the most likely scenario. I can't see any other way that replacing an already produced plastic sprue with metal add on parts makes any sort of financial or logistical sense.
I did like the RT Predator aesthetic, but my 2nd Ed metal/plastic Predator Annihilator and Pred Destructor tanks are two of my favourite models. I still play them today in all their glory.
The turret being forward was a large part of the problem with both of the hybrid models, along with the heavy riveting looking out of place against the plastic hull, but the annihilator makes it worse because the turret design also just doesn't match the sponsons. It looks like a vehicle cobbled together from spare parts.
I would be curious as to what the reasoning was with replacing the RT-era kit with the hybrid models. The similar vintage battlewagon and land raider kits were supposedly dropped from the range because the moulds were damaged. I don't recall ever hearing anything similar about the predator sprue, but it seems like the most likely scenario. I can't see any other way that replacing an already produced plastic sprue with metal add on parts makes any sort of financial or logistical sense.
Mould issues perhaps? The turret forward was actually a sensible design choice in the real world. But we loved the unrealistic rear design.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
PenitentJake wrote: 2nd ed was great in its time. I didn't find any of its rules particularly problematic at the time, though in hindsight, I think some of the newer rules are better.
Assault was the biggest problem for us, big time sink and there are numerous solutions to improve it floating around. Vehicle targeting datafax (was that 1st or 2nd?) was great in theory, in practice a lot of ammunition explosions.
Targeting Datafax was both 1st and 2nd, just in different ways.
Tail end of 1st you had a universal clear plastic template, which you centred over drawn plans of a vehicle, and that determined if and where you hit (the smaller the vehicle, the great the chance of “hitting” an empty space).
2nd Ed tidied this up, with each vehicle having a Datafax, the rear of which listed it hit locations, armour ratings and damage tables.
If I can be bothered later, I’ll break the books out to provide a pictorial example.
Tail end of 1st you had a universal clear plastic template, which you centred over drawn plans of a vehicle, and that determined if and where you hit (the smaller the vehicle, the great the chance of “hitting” an empty space).
2nd Ed tidied this up, with each vehicle having a Datafax, the rear of which listed it hit locations, armour ratings and damage tables.
If I can be bothered later, I’ll break the books out to provide a pictorial example.
Similar to the original Space marine/epic titan hit locations.
It didn't entirely make sense though, because you should only be able to hit locations you can see, unless you're firing a parabolic round or blast.
Tail end of 1st you had a universal clear plastic template, which you centred over drawn plans of a vehicle, and that determined if and where you hit (the smaller the vehicle, the great the chance of “hitting” an empty space).
2nd Ed tidied this up, with each vehicle having a Datafax, the rear of which listed it hit locations, armour ratings and damage tables.
If I can be bothered later, I’ll break the books out to provide a pictorial example.
Similar to the original Space marine/epic titan hit locations.
It didn't entirely make sense though, because you should only be able to hit locations you can see, unless you're firing a parabolic round or blast.
Oh Lawks, I need to a proper deep dive don’t I?
Not to prove you wrong, Good Sir. Instead I’m in my mid 40’s and so have forgotten whatever it was we did when I wasn’t all old and crusty and clapped out.
Now. I’m meeting a friend for Beer tomorrow evening. Maybe check back on this utter drivel on Saturday. If someone if feeling charitable, PM me a reminder?
Cap'n Facebeard wrote: Does anyone know if there's a site or resource where someone has made 2nd ed rules for modern units? Datafaxes for modern 40K vehicles, etc?
I know people have been doing it for fun ad hoc. No concerted effort afaik.
Remembering that the dark millennium rulebook has vehicle design rules in it, so you could probably build a simulacrum of anything with those. Although they are more 'weapon replacement' rules than anything else.
But given that virtually every vehicle in 40k is just a variant of one from 2nd ed, it shouldn't be too hard. Even tau vehicles are really just crappier eldar ones.
Cap'n Facebeard wrote: Does anyone know if there's a site or resource where someone has made 2nd ed rules for modern units? Datafaxes for modern 40K vehicles, etc?
I'm currently working on a 2.5 version of the Necron codex, retrofitting their modern model range into it. As part of that, I've redesigned the datafax a little, resized to work with current available print-on-demand card sizes, and consolidating the information you actually need during the game all onto the front. Weapon options which you only actually need during list building are rolled into the codex army list entry.
(click to embiggen)
Also working on some aircraft rules. The only existing rules I could find were the Thunderhawk rules in Citadel Journal, which weren't great, as they result in not having any need for an actual model unless you land. I wanted something that was distinct from skimmers, without just being an abstract strafing run with no model needed.
So... I wrote some. Here's a first draft.
I initially considered not giving it a crew, but it creates potential issues with those occasional places were the rules interact with crew... so it was simpler to give it a crew than try to find and plug whatever edge cases might arise from not having them.
Cap'n Facebeard wrote: Ah OK makes sense. Its funny to imagine a Monolith being swarmed with snotlings too.
Oh I do love the original Shokk Attack Gun, my favorite weapon(and the greatest) in 40k that kept me playing orks off and on for many years and editions until I finally came to the conclusion GW was not going to put the original fun back into the Boyz and sold the army. Kind of glad I did it when I did since half or more of my vehicles(and my favorite ones at that)went to legends the next edition.
The damage chart for hitting dreadnoughts was absolutely amazing and I still laugh when I think about it today.
Whether or not Monoliths have crew is something which GW has flip-flopped on over time.
The 3rd edition codex states that there are no crew, but the 5th edition (and subsequent copy-pastes) states that there are (and by the time we got to the conclusion of the Warhammer Adventures series, there are whole suites of rooms with occupants *sigh*). It doesn't really look like there is space inside the current model for crew.
Personally, I still prefer basically all Necron vehicles not having crew, and think that Monoliths are far more interesting as solid lumps of necrodermis/stone than spooky Rhinos.
I don't mind Necron things having crew. I think its a great way to highlight their cursed existence where they are crewing a vehicle because that's what they would have done when alive.
Their weapons and war machines were evolutions of their original organic selves because they thought once the war was over they'd get their bodies back. That they didn't want to abandon all that they were.
Until it didn't happen and now their army is a mix. Some parts clinging to the past; some given into madness in accepting their fate as machines; some parts Canoptek built to look after their masters.
Lord Damocles wrote: Whether or not Monoliths have crew is something which GW has flip-flopped on over time.
The 3rd edition codex states that there are no crew, but the 5th edition (and subsequent copy-pastes) states that there are (and by the time we got to the conclusion of the Warhammer Adventures series, there are whole suites of rooms with occupants *sigh*). It doesn't really look like there is space inside the current model for crew.
Personally, I still prefer basically all Necron vehicles not having crew, and think that Monoliths are far more interesting as solid lumps of necrodermis/stone than spooky Rhinos.
Totally agree that the Monolith shouldn't have a crew.
Disagree about the space for rooms inside that model though. It's a little hard to grasp how the model scales actually work, because the proportions of infantry models are weird, and their poses are often funny (waving arms and such) But the Monolith really is the size of small building.
Yeah scale is always a bit wobbly and the Monolith I've always thought scales like a wargame building in that its woefully undersized compared to what it should be in reality of the setting.
Well, with all portal tech and that? I can see it being kinda both.
As in the Monolith we see on the field itself doesn’t have a crew of its own anywhere near the battlefield. Instead, there’s a potentially substantial crew elsewhere managing it via sensors and that.
Overread wrote: Yeah scale is always a bit wobbly and the Monolith I've always thought scales like a wargame building in that its woefully undersized compared to what it should be in reality of the setting.
Oh I actually think the scale of the model is fine (clarification: old model with old infantry models, the new scales have shifted). The perception of the size of various models is bad.
Like, it's hard to appreciate how big that thing is even taking its literal size.
Overread wrote: Yeah scale is always a bit wobbly and the Monolith I've always thought scales like a wargame building in that its woefully undersized compared to what it should be in reality of the setting.
Oh I actually think the scale of the model is fine (clarification: old model with old infantry models, the new scales have shifted). The perception of the size of various models is bad.
Like, it's hard to appreciate how big that thing is even taking its literal size.
I see this a lot with Titans..people complaining that the official sizes are too small without realising how big they would actually be.
insaniak wrote: The 2nd ed Warriors, though, are hands down my least favourite models in the entire 40K range. They were a massive downgrade from the look of the RT-era Advanced Space Crusade plastic warriors, and an absolute cow to build and keep assembled. Ugly models in every way.
I have a soft spot for the later 2nd Ed pewter Warriors, the ones that often get forgotten when talking Tyranids across the editions. The battle scenes in the 3rd Ed rulebook, showing late-2nd Ed Tyranids painted in the purple-and-black scheme that we now call Hydra, made a strong impression on me, and I think they do a lot to improve sculpts that can otherwise verge on goofy.
I'd have no trouble with Monoliths being bigger on the inside of the current model actually looked like it has an inside, and we didn't have examples of them being destroyed by krak grenades being thrown into the portal (unless the interiors are highly volatile (in which case why) they can't be building-sized).
There's also not really much of a need for them to have significant interior spaces if the portal can just connect to a tombworld/ship.
The thing physically present on the field is seemingly just an armed, mobile portal generator. The stuff handling the teleporting could be anywhere, connected solely by the portal.
Yeah I definitely prefer to think of them as just nodes in a network that can act autonomously or via remote command, with non-realspace "interiors" if anything at all.
I don't know the Krak grenade story, but it sounds dumb. Authors be writing for saturday morning cartoons.
Insectum7 wrote: Yeah I definitely prefer to think of them as just nodes in a network that can act autonomously or via remote command, with non-realspace "interiors" if anything at all.
I don't know the Krak grenade story, but it sounds dumb. Authors be writing for saturday morning cartoons.
Pretty much anything can be taken care of in 40k by force-feeding it a krack grenade or the business end of a plasma pistol.
^It would be entertaining to go back and try out the "wall of Rhino" list I'd theorized but couldn't actualize for lack of models.
A Marine was 30 points a model.
A Rhino was 50. Better survivability, better BS (targeters on the bolters I think), better firepower (2 bolters instead of 1!), faster and LOS blocking. 10 Rhinos for 500 points seems like it'd be pretty obnoxious to deal with.
But, on balance I still think it worked better than the FoC initially turned out.
Ref 3rd-7th Ed Codexes with wildly oversubscribed Elites sections and under filled Troops, compared to other 3rd-7th Ed Codexes that had a fairer distribution.
As well as doing no more or less to encourage Beardy Armies than 2nd Ed? It went one worse, encouraging Cookie Cutter Beardy Armies, so even when getting ROFLstomped, I wasn’t ever given the luxury of a Unique ROFLStomping.
The real problem with 2nd Ed. is that it was either an RPG trying to be a skirmish wargame or a skirmish wargame trying to be an RPG. You had gradients of damage effects that were damn near unmanageable, as well as a general lack of simplification needed for mass games. This is why those rules work best in a Necromunda type setting rather than mass battles. Every problem stems from this. Except for the whole comp thing, that was its own thing. Nothing like building a company level force of things so rare that they'd mostly exist in about .3% of forces if they were in the real world.
Thing is? When the edition first came out, Armies weren’t that terribly far from the size of large Necromunda Gangs.
Consider that your basic, as he comes, no upgrades Tactical Marine was 30 points. And a tooled up, Jump Pack equipped Assault Squad could easily exceed 500 points in its own right.
Two such squads is already going to be over 800 points. And needing a character? You could get comfortably close to 1,000 depending how recklessly you spent on Wargear Cards.
To round out 1,500? Predator, Techmarine (to unlock the Predator) and a unit of Terminators.
In fact? Not delving into Wargear Cards, let’s price that up.
Assault Squad (300) upgrades are what my actual squad had back then.
Veteran Sarge (5), Meltabombs (50) Jump Packs (50), 2 Power Swords (12) 2 Power Axes (14) 2 Powerfists (20) 2 Plasma Pistols (10) 2 Hand Flamers (14)
Space Marine Predator (90)
Lascannon Sponsons (45) Auto Launchers, loaded with Frag (5)
140 points.
So….28 models total, 1,528 points, with only the Techmarine having a Wargear card, and even then only for WYSIWYG purposes.
To take it up to 2,000? I think I’d add a Devastator Squad (300 base) with two Heavy Bolters with Hellfire shells, Lascannon and Plasma Cannon (425)
Teensy, tiny armies. At least in the beginning. As ever, the longer you’re involved, the larger your army grows, and the larger the point limit you’ll want to play (hence 3rd Ed)
But, on balance I still think it worked better than the FoC initially turned out.
Ref 3rd-7th Ed Codexes with wildly oversubscribed Elites sections and under filled Troops, compared to other 3rd-7th Ed Codexes that had a fairer distribution.
I think that was by design and helped armies retain different identities. Different factions manifesting differently is a plus. It's part of army diversity.
Nids were particularly badly hit, as so many units were all squirming around in Elites. And when you’ve only the three slots to pick, it overly informed you army’s construction.
The FOC had a period in time where it was pretty solid for most armies; however the FOC was too inflexible and perhaps lacked customising to specific armies
The result is that steadily it became less and less useful and doubling up just kind of made it rather pointless.
As Doc says the Tyranids wound up with a load of their specialists in the Elite slot and picking which ones to take drastically cut down your options. Meanwhile their heavy support, at the time, was far more open.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Thing is? When the edition first came out, Armies weren’t that terribly far from the size of large Necromunda Gangs.
Consider that your basic, as he comes, no upgrades Tactical Marine was 30 points. And a tooled up, Jump Pack equipped Assault Squad could easily exceed 500 points in its own right.
Two such squads is already going to be over 800 points. And needing a character? You could get comfortably close to 1,000 depending how recklessly you spent on Wargear Cards.
To round out 1,500? Predator, Techmarine (to unlock the Predator) and a unit of Terminators.
In fact? Not delving into Wargear Cards, let’s price that up.
Assault Squad (300) upgrades are what my actual squad had back then.
Veteran Sarge (5), Meltabombs (50) Jump Packs (50), 2 Power Swords (12) 2 Power Axes (14) 2 Powerfists (20) 2 Plasma Pistols (10) 2 Hand Flamers (14)
Space Marine Predator (90)
Lascannon Sponsons (45) Auto Launchers, loaded with Frag (5)
140 points.
So….28 models total, 1,528 points, with only the Techmarine having a Wargear card, and even then only for WYSIWYG purposes.
To take it up to 2,000? I think I’d add a Devastator Squad (300 base) with two Heavy Bolters with Hellfire shells, Lascannon and Plasma Cannon (425)
Teensy, tiny armies. At least in the beginning. As ever, the longer you’re involved, the larger your army grows, and the larger the point limit you’ll want to play (hence 3rd Ed)
Can someone less lazy than me price this up in 3rd? Probably using the Blood Angels rules for a veteran assault squad given how tooled up this one is.
Nids were particularly badly hit, as so many units were all squirming around in Elites. And when you’ve only the three slots to pick, it overly informed you army’s construction.
Er... 'Nids in 3rd had just two Elites units, of which one (Lictors) could only take a single slot and the other (Warriors) could be taken as HQ.
I don't think their elites got particularly crowded until... 6th? When did they get the Maleceptor and aexocrine etc.?
In 3rd,I think the only really crowded Elites section was for Eldar.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Thing is? When the edition first came out, Armies weren’t that terribly far from the size of large Necromunda Gangs.
Consider that your basic, as he comes, no upgrades Tactical Marine was 30 points. And a tooled up, Jump Pack equipped Assault Squad could easily exceed 500 points in its own right.
Two such squads is already going to be over 800 points. And needing a character? You could get comfortably close to 1,000 depending how recklessly you spent on Wargear Cards.
To round out 1,500? Predator, Techmarine (to unlock the Predator) and a unit of Terminators.
In fact? Not delving into Wargear Cards, let’s price that up.
Assault Squad (300) upgrades are what my actual squad had back then.
Veteran Sarge (5), Meltabombs (50) Jump Packs (50), 2 Power Swords (12) 2 Power Axes (14) 2 Powerfists (20) 2 Plasma Pistols (10) 2 Hand Flamers (14)
Space Marine Predator (90)
Lascannon Sponsons (45) Auto Launchers, loaded with Frag (5)
140 points.
So….28 models total, 1,528 points, with only the Techmarine having a Wargear card, and even then only for WYSIWYG purposes.
To take it up to 2,000? I think I’d add a Devastator Squad (300 base) with two Heavy Bolters with Hellfire shells, Lascannon and Plasma Cannon (425)
Teensy, tiny armies. At least in the beginning. As ever, the longer you’re involved, the larger your army grows, and the larger the point limit you’ll want to play (hence 3rd Ed)
You've kind of proven my point insofar as a MAJOR negative for 2nd. How many of those units are supposed to be the backbone of the army? Touted in several places as the MAJORITY of the army? That lone Tactical Squad. Were you forced to take that one squad? Because, honestly, nobody in 2nd bothered to take anything except the most efficient and lethal units because you weren't held to anything but percentages and 4 categories.
It's even more telling when you immediately add MORE specialized/Elite troops when you want to bump up your force.
Overread wrote:The FOC had a period in time where it was pretty solid for most armies; however the FOC was too inflexible and perhaps lacked customising to specific armies
The result is that steadily it became less and less useful and doubling up just kind of made it rather pointless.
As Doc says the Tyranids wound up with a load of their specialists in the Elite slot and picking which ones to take drastically cut down your options. Meanwhile their heavy support, at the time, was far more open.
It being inflexible was kind of the point. See my comments on Doc's post.
Just Tony wrote: You've kind of proven my point insofar as a MAJOR negative for 2nd. How many of those units are supposed to be the backbone of the army? Touted in several places as the MAJORITY of the army? That lone Tactical Squad. Were you forced to take that one squad? Because, honestly, nobody in 2nd bothered to take anything except the most efficient and lethal units because you weren't held to anything but percentages and 4 categories.
This really depended on who you were playing with. Tournaments certainly tended towards the more cut throat lists, because 2nd edition was largely the era before composition scoring. Although the very first 2nd ed tournament I played in was composed mostly of players from a local (rather large) gaming club, and most of us just used our regular casual lists for it... the worst lists were brought by out-of-towners unfamiliar with the local vibe.
The gaming groups I played with during 2nd varied between 'just use whatever you bought because you like it' and 'build the most brutal list you can' and various points in between over the years. The key was that the game was supposed to be played by people who were looking for the same experience... and so long as you were doing that, having that flexibility to make pretty much whatever sort of list you wanted to was a good thing, not a flaw.
Captain (Force commander 60pt)
Powerfist (25) Plasma Pistol (15) Frag (1) Krack (2) no blind
93pts total
Techmarines could only be taken as part of a command squad, not as a solo character. If you wanted to split him out and match to the list he would be:
Veteran Space Marine (18)
Power Weapon (15) Servoarm (30)
63 points total.
10 man Tac Squad (150)
Vet sarge (15) ML w/frag/krack (10) Flamer (6) Krack grenades (20) (no plasma missiles, and frag grenades not included)
201 points total
10 man BA Honour Guard (180) (closest unit at the time to allow warger options)
Vet sarge (12) Melta bombs for all (40) 2x plasma pistols (10) Jump Packs (100) 4x Power weapons (40) 2x power fists (50)
Hand flamers were just extra CC weapons in 3rd, but the squad could take a pair of flamers for (6)
438 total. Dose not include frag/krack grenades which would add 10/20 points
Technically this squad needs a HQ with a jump pack to lead them. Also worth noting that they are just basic vets with 3+ armor, not the golden boys of later editions
5 Man Terminator squad (210)
AsC (20) Chainfist (5)
Total 235
Pred Destructor (100)
Las sponsons (25) Smoke launchers (3 points)
128 total
1,158 points in 3rd. And we had to bend a few rules to get there.
I have a soft spot for the later 2nd Ed pewter Warriors, the ones that often get forgotten when talking Tyranids across the editions. The battle scenes in the 3rd Ed rulebook, showing late-2nd Ed Tyranids painted in the purple-and-black scheme that we now call Hydra, made a strong impression on me, and I think they do a lot to improve sculpts that can otherwise verge on goofy.
I think it's rather telling that there are only a couple of warriors in that pic, and they're largely obscured by the lictor zoom-in frame... Makes me suspect that those models weren't particularly popular in the studio, either.
It was genuinely pretty rare not to see Tactical Squads. Between Combat Squad potential, Rapid Fire (double tap your Bolters if you remained stationary*) and every being able to split fire? They were a very solid unit.
My Assault Squads were fairly modestly equipped. This was because I saw opponents load up, only to lose significant amounts of points once casualties started being suffered.
As I’ve got it next to me, here are some pics from WD Battle Reports, sourced from the Battles book. Please not Doc Corp cannot be held responsible for misty, dewy eyes caused by these nostalgic piccies.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: It was genuinely pretty rare not to see Tactical Squads. Between Combat Squad potential, Rapid Fire (double tap your Bolters if you remained stationary*) and every being able to split fire? They were a very solid unit.
Also, Tactical Squads were plastic and so were considerably cheaper to collect than pretty much everything else in the Marine list.
Also worth noting Marines were significantly better than most infantry in the game.
Orks might have an advantage in numbers. Shuriken Catapults were the superior weapon etc.
But as should be the “natural order” of things? Marines did something better than your guys. Either resilience, firepower and accuracy or fisticuffs. They were comfortably above average at everything.
Just did a quick inflation calculator on the Assault Marines, which came in boxes of 5 metal models. I think they were £25 when I bought them in 1995. That’s equivalent of £60 today. But if they were £20? That’s £48 today.
Either way, for a squad of 10? That’s a hefty price tag for a pimply teen* paying for it through his paper round.
*please note I myself wasn’t actually pimply. I’ve always been blessed with good skin.
It was genuinely pretty rare not to see Tactical Squads. Between Combat Squad potential, Rapid Fire (double tap your Bolters if you remained stationary*) and every being able to split fire? They were a very solid unit.
I think I used Tac squads only a few times during 2nd. They really didn't seem to compete next to Devastators, Assault and Terminator Squads. Notably, the first time I used one was my very first 40k game. Might have been 500 points. I think I had a Captain and a Tactical Squad. My opponent took something, something and an Assassin with Polymorphene, Displacer Field, Combi Weapon and various CC weapons. Naturally one of my Marines turned into the Assassin, who started to butcher everything around him. That sorta set the tone for our group. It was dirty and cutthroat from the start.
On small armies, I just checked my Nid codex and Termagants are 6 points, Hormagaunts 8. One could field 100 of each and get 200 models for 1400 points. The 100 model Hormagaunt army popped up from time to time in 2nd for sure, and that left you 1200 points to fill out the rest of a 2k list.
Back to the FOC discussion for a moment, arguably the army with the least amount of options was Necrons. But even with their rigid army composition they still managed to have at least 4 flavors of effective build. Silver Tide of Warrior spam, Multiple Monoliths leaning heavy into Ressurection list, the Destroyer Spam that was pretty popular, and a take-all-comers variety type of list (what I settled on eventually). I think there were people that leaned heavily into Scarabs+Destroyer Lord too, iirc. Immortal Spam would have probably done great as well, I just never saw anyone invest in it. Imo the FOC really didn't make things as homogenous as you make it out to be, and any issue stemmed more from a particular codex rather than the overall army org design philosophy.
I think I used Tac squads only a few times during 2nd. They really didn't seem to compete next to Devastators, Assault and Terminator Squads. Notably, the first time I used one was my very first 40k game. Might have been 500 points. I think I had a Captain and a Tactical Squad. My opponent took something, something and an Assassin with Polymorphene, Displacer Field, Combi Weapon and various CC weapons. Naturally one of my Marines turned into the Assassin, who started to butcher everything around him. That sorta set the tone for our group. It was dirty and cutthroat from the start.
I mean, pretty much any force you took at 500 points would have struggled against an opponent with a tooled up assassin. 1000 points was the bare minimum size game for tooled up characters, and even that still wound up pretty unbalanced a lot of the time.
On small armies, I just checked my Nid codex and Termagants are 6 points, Hormagaunts 8. One could field 100 of each and get 200 models for 1400 points. The 100 model Hormagaunt army popped up from time to time in 2nd for sure, and that left you 1200 points to fill out the rest of a 2k list.
Gaunts, cultists and grots were good for hordes, because that's exactly what they were designed to be. And it was cool because it was such a contrast to most other lists.
Captain (Force commander 60pt)
Powerfist (25) Plasma Pistol (15) Frag (1) Krack (2) no blind
93pts total
Techmarines could only be taken as part of a command squad, not as a solo character. If you wanted to split him out and match to the list he would be:
Veteran Space Marine (18)
Power Weapon (15) Servoarm (30)
63 points total.
10 man Tac Squad (150)
Vet sarge (15) ML w/frag/krack (10) Flamer (6) Krack grenades (20) (no plasma missiles, and frag grenades not included)
201 points total
10 man BA Honour Guard (180) (closest unit at the time to allow warger options)
Vet sarge (12) Melta bombs for all (40) 2x plasma pistols (10) Jump Packs (100) 4x Power weapons (40) 2x power fists (50)
Hand flamers were just extra CC weapons in 3rd, but the squad could take a pair of flamers for (6)
438 total. Dose not include frag/krack grenades which would add 10/20 points
Technically this squad needs a HQ with a jump pack to lead them. Also worth noting that they are just basic vets with 3+ armor, not the golden boys of later editions
5 Man Terminator squad (210)
AsC (20) Chainfist (5)
Total 235
Pred Destructor (100)
Las sponsons (25) Smoke launchers (3 points)
128 total
1,158 points in 3rd. And we had to bend a few rules to get there.
So Space Marine armies got ~50% bigger in 3rd. Thanks! It isn't as big an increase as I think is commonly inferred.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: It was genuinely pretty rare not to see Tactical Squads. Between Combat Squad potential, Rapid Fire (double tap your Bolters if you remained stationary*) and every being able to split fire? They were a very solid unit.
Also, Tactical Squads were plastic and so were considerably cheaper to collect than pretty much everything else in the Marine list.
Once again circuling round to the idea earlier in the thread that 2nd edition composition was dictated more by financial constraints than rules.
There’s little argument 2nd Ed, model for model, tended to be more expensive due to fewer plastic kits, especially at the beginning.
But, the dramatically smaller armies did offset that.
Yes a £25 Dreadnought was a lot of money, even for those buying from an adult wage. But typically? You’re only buying the one.
Characters being maybe £8 tops? That’s a fair amount of points, Spesh once you started piling on Wargear which could ramp up their in-game cost.
Even the Assault Squad I set out. £50, or around £120 in today’s money isn’t cheap for a single squad. At all. But, as nearly a third of a 1,500 point army after equipment? Not unaffordable or an unattractive expense.
Devastators varied of course. The boxed set came with set weapons, and the remaining five bods typically came from the cheapo plastic 5 man squad as you only needed Bolter Marines. To go custom loadout you were Blister Packing/Mail Order, which was a bit more expensive, but still mitigated by the cheapo Bolters.
Terminators become much more attractive once the Space Hulk multi-part plastic ones became available, probably around 1994/1995? Certainly I was studying GCSE Maths at the time,
There’s little argument 2nd Ed, model for model, tended to be more expensive due to fewer plastic kits, especially at the beginning.
But, the dramatically smaller armies did offset that.
Yes a £25 Dreadnought was a lot of money, even for those buying from an adult wage. But typically? You’re only buying the one.
Characters being maybe £8 tops? That’s a fair amount of points, Spesh once you started piling on Wargear which could ramp up their in-game cost.
Even the Assault Squad I set out. £50, or around £120 in today’s money isn’t cheap for a single squad. At all. But, as nearly a third of a 1,500 point army after equipment? Not unaffordable or an unattractive expense.
Devastators varied of course. The boxed set came with set weapons, and the remaining five bods typically came from the cheapo plastic 5 man squad as you only needed Bolter Marines. To go custom loadout you were Blister Packing/Mail Order, which was a bit more expensive, but still mitigated by the cheapo Bolters.
Terminators become much more attractive once the Space Hulk multi-part plastic ones became available, probably around 1994/1995? Certainly I was studying GCSE Maths at the time,
Marines are the best case scenario though. What about Guard or the aforementioned Tyranid Gaunts?
Also, I'm not convinced that a 50% increase in Marine army size is all that dramatic. That is going from 28 models to 42 (by model count), maybe adding a couple of extra units, three at a push. If the units became half the price (because plastic) then it actually becomes easier to create the 3rd edition list.
Guard were an odd one, as they had a unique army structure.
Basically, for every squad you had, you could take a support (like a Leman Russ, Basilisk etc).
I’d need to find some reliable historical price list, but Guard were surprisingly Not Horrific To Buy, despite all the infantry being metal. Plus, they were typically “one box, one unit”. Outside of Heavy Weapon Squads.
I had a look on Stuff of Legends, but unfortunately the older catalogues don't seem to have a price list. The 2006 one does, but that isn't terribly helpful for this discussion.
I think it will require dredging through old White Dwarfs and I don't have the bandwidth for that right now.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Regarding army sizes, I went and pointed up the example 1500pt army list in the 2nd edition Imperial Guard codex for 3rd edition (using the first codex, although I substituted the sanctioned psyker rules from the second codex for the primaris psykers).
The list is a Colonel command squad with 2 meltaguns and a missile launcher in Chimera, an infantry squad with flamer and heavy bolter, a second infantry squad with plasma gun and missile launcher in a Chimera, a heavy weapons squad with two autocannons and a heavy bolter, a Lieutenant command squad with a lascannon and a heavy bolter, 5 ratlings, 5 rough riders with hunting lances, and a Leman Russ. There was a primaris psyker attached to each command squad.
That 1500pt list is actually 1025pts in 3rd, with the caveat it isn't a legal army (needs an extra Guardsmen squad and platoon command squads couldn't take two heavy weapons teams in this edition). So sticks with the ~50% larger army sizes in 3rd. Notably, the Imperial Guard Cadian battleforce from the end of 3rd got you about a third of that by itself. Another heavy weapons squad set, the Cadian command squad (metal), cadian officers set (metal), the blister with a meltagunner and plasma gunner (metal), two Chimeras, and the ratlings and rough riders (also metal) rounds out the list. A second battleforce would comfortably round it out to 1500pts though.
Basically, for every squad you had, you could take a support (like a Leman Russ, Basilisk etc).
I’d need to find some reliable historical price list, but Guard were surprisingly Not Horrific To Buy, despite all the infantry being metal. Plus, they were typically “one box, one unit”. Outside of Heavy Weapon Squads.
From memory my old Guard army which I assume was 1500pts was a command squad, 3 russ, 3 chimera, 3 infantry squads. Command squad hid and co-ordinated the battlecannon barrage. Tanks and chimera rolled (perhaps from off table) up, fired, fired smoke grenades. Turn 2 tried to roll through the smokes, fired another inaccurate barrage, final smoke rounds from the 2 shot launchers, turn 3 survivors rolled through smoke, havoc ensued. Turn 4 my few survivors huddled together against the horror.
The other thing, which I should’ve mentioned when sharing the piccies, is that White Dwarf Battle Reports pretty much set the standard.
As in, that’s what we had to aspire to, 2nd Ed being a time before the internet was widespread.
Not dumping on the next person’s preference, but WD didn’t encourage Beardy Lists, instead promoting a “take what you want” approach. WAAC and “is my army competitive” wouldn’t really enter my sphere until 3rd Edition landed, because I just had no exposure to gamers that weren’t part of my immediate gaming circles.
So yeah, the army selection could be abused. But in my experience? It just wasn’t. Because 40K wasn’t presented to us as a Competitive Thing, so much as a Collaborative Effort to tell a cool story via dice and asplosions.
White Dwarf lists/loadouts was actually a term used at the time (and later) as well. Especially for the one-of-everything dev squads. TAC lists taken just a little too far, to the point that while they could do anything, they couldn’t actually get results.
That said, when you put two of them on the table across from each other, you could have a fun game. Which could be said about all of 40k across the years. If you and your opponent were on the same page for how hard you were going, you could have a lot of fun. Either casual v. casual, or comp v. comp. It was when you mixed the two that things got un-fun.
And in fairness that's an issue with almost any game.
It's not just attitude either, but you often find that competitive list builders are often, if not more skilled or practiced, often more aware of tactics to try and use. So they can often take a very different mental approach to the game whilst a more casual/fluffy list player might not.
This can even be down to simple things like the competitive player goes for the objectives whilst the casual just keeps trying to kill random things each turn etc....
It's an issue for most games that are not pure chance games like Snakes and Ladders. As soon as choice, tactics, thinking, planning etc come into play any disparity between players in skill/attitude/competency is going to flare up.
RPG games can often smooth this over between players because it runs through a DM; but they can have the other issue of where players and DM differ in attitude and so forth. Get a DM who was after a nice story game and pair them with a heavily combat focused group of power-players and neither side is setting themselves up for the good time they envisioned.
Nevelon wrote: White Dwarf lists/loadouts was actually a term used at the time (and later) as well. Especially for the one-of-everything dev squads. TAC lists taken just a little too far, to the point that while they could do anything, they couldn’t actually get results.
That said, when you put two of them on the table across from each other, you could have a fun game. Which could be said about all of 40k across the years. If you and your opponent were on the same page for how hard you were going, you could have a lot of fun. Either casual v. casual, or comp v. comp. It was when you mixed the two that things got un-fun.
Yup.
And for absolute clarity, Dear Reader, I’m not suggesting anyone was Doing It Wrong. Just that for many, with WD articles and Battle Reports being the standard bearer, our hobby tended to reflect that. Sure we found favoured combos which performed well, but for me and mine, getting peak performance and synergy just didn’t cross our tiny teenage minds.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: The other thing, which I should’ve mentioned when sharing the piccies, is that White Dwarf Battle Reports pretty much set the standard.
As in, that’s what we had to aspire to, 2nd Ed being a time before the internet was widespread.
Not dumping on the next person’s preference, but WD didn’t encourage Beardy Lists, instead promoting a “take what you want” approach. WAAC and “is my army competitive” wouldn’t really enter my sphere until 3rd Edition landed, because I just had no exposure to gamers that weren’t part of my immediate gaming circles.
So yeah, the army selection could be abused. But in my experience? It just wasn’t. Because 40K wasn’t presented to us as a Competitive Thing, so much as a Collaborative Effort to tell a cool story via dice and asplosions.
Just because you didn't see it in your club does not mean it wasn't out there. If a rule set exists, then there will be a plurality of players who seek to exploit it.
Ohh now we are trying to remember our lists Chaos
My Lord (something like 365 points)
Level 4 Psyker
Terminator Armor with Lightning Claw
Mark of Nurgle
Combat Drugs
Daemon Weapon
Displacer Field
5 Terminators, Mark of Khorne, twin Lightning claws
5 Vets with 2 lascannons
5 regular Marines with 3 Autocannons
1 Chaos Dreadnought
1500 points was the standard we played.
17 models.
My regular marine with an autocannon one shotted a Hive tyrant in 2nd. Was promoted to sergeant.
As a ruthless sergeant he killed a squad member during a game to motivate the rest to perform better and they did in 3rd edition. We actually rolled for it after two rounds of his squad missing everything.
In 5th he killed a terminator in close combat and was a lone survivor in a game. Stole the armor and weapons.
Became a champion in 6th. Took a break in 7th. Killed his lord in 8th, now commands in 10th. One day I might get around to giving this guy a name LOL. I should make an Inductii squad in my Heresy army just to have him present there too.
Col. Dash wrote: Ohh now we are trying to remember our lists Chaos
My Lord (something like 365 points)
Level 4 Psyker
Terminator Armor with Lightning Claw
Mark of Nurgle
Combat Drugs
Daemon Weapon
Displacer Field
5 Terminators, Mark of Khorne, twin Lightning claws
5 Vets with 2 lascannons
5 regular Marines with 3 Autocannons
1 Chaos Dreadnought
1500 points was the standard we played.
17 models.
My regular marine with an autocannon one shotted a Hive tyrant in 2nd. Was promoted to sergeant.
As a ruthless sergeant he killed a squad member during a game to motivate the rest to perform better and they did in 3rd edition. We actually rolled for it after two rounds of his squad missing everything.
In 5th he killed a terminator in close combat and was a lone survivor in a game. Stole the armor and weapons.
Became a champion in 6th. Took a break in 7th. Killed his lord in 8th, now commands in 10th. One day I might get around to giving this guy a name LOL. I should make an Inductii squad in my Heresy army just to have him present there too.
I mean... if they have gone 8 editions murdering their way up the command chain without a name, surely they should remain as the Nameless One at this point?
There’s little argument 2nd Ed, model for model, tended to be more expensive due to fewer plastic kits, especially at the beginning.
But, the dramatically smaller armies did offset that.
Yes a £25 Dreadnought was a lot of money, even for those buying from an adult wage. But typically? You’re only buying the one.
Characters being maybe £8 tops? That’s a fair amount of points, Spesh once you started piling on Wargear which could ramp up their in-game cost.
Even the Assault Squad I set out. £50, or around £120 in today’s money isn’t cheap for a single squad. At all. But, as nearly a third of a 1,500 point army after equipment? Not unaffordable or an unattractive expense.
Devastators varied of course. The boxed set came with set weapons, and the remaining five bods typically came from the cheapo plastic 5 man squad as you only needed Bolter Marines. To go custom loadout you were Blister Packing/Mail Order, which was a bit more expensive, but still mitigated by the cheapo Bolters.
Terminators become much more attractive once the Space Hulk multi-part plastic ones became available, probably around 1994/1995? Certainly I was studying GCSE Maths at the time,
Marines are the best case scenario though. What about Guard or the aforementioned Tyranid Gaunts?
Also, I'm not convinced that a 50% increase in Marine army size is all that dramatic. That is going from 28 models to 42 (by model count), maybe adding a couple of extra units, three at a push. If the units became half the price (because plastic) then it actually becomes easier to create the 3rd edition list.
Doing a 1-1 comparison isn't the full story with army size, as the types of armies that were effective changed a bit, so army composition changed. During 2nd running a smattering of specialists was the competetive option. But during 3rd, with the reduction in cost of a Marine (from 30 to 15) and with their new, tougher armor (the new AP system), the Power Armor Horde became viable. My most competetive build in 3rd had 60 Marines in it, as opposed to the 28ish in 2nd. This is reflected in one of the WD highlighted armies at the time too.
Coming off of the herohammer that was 2nd, a lot of people underestimated just what a bunch of marines tapping out a solid bolter drill could do.
Statlines were significantly flattened. Most layered defenses removed. You basically marine was a solid pic and could get work done. I got a lot of use out of tac squads myself.
Nevelon wrote: Coming off of the herohammer that was 2nd, a lot of people underestimated just what a bunch of marines tapping out a solid bolter drill could do.
Statlines were significantly flattened. Most layered defenses removed. You basically marine was a solid pic and could get work done. I got a lot of use out of tac squads myself.
Also helped that you could choose a unit of 5-6 Tacs with a special and heavy weapon
Nevelon wrote: Coming off of the herohammer that was 2nd, a lot of people underestimated just what a bunch of marines tapping out a solid bolter drill could do.
Statlines were significantly flattened. Most layered defenses removed. You basically marine was a solid pic and could get work done. I got a lot of use out of tac squads myself.
People love to use the phrase hero hammer for 2nd ed, but I watched characters slaughter just as many if not more people in melee in 3rd onwards.
As per 2nd ed rules, a single model could not fight more than 5-6 other models because they all had to be in btb contact with them. And unless you were marneus calgar, by the time you got to your 5th guardsman, you were facing WS7 with 5 attacks. And although unlikely, a marine character can still lose a melee with a guardsmen even on the first round. WS 7 rolling 2 2s and a 1 against a guardsman rolling 1 6 would have the guardsman winning by 1 - WS3+6+1 from the fumble = 10 vs the marine's 9. The odds improve for every guardsman after that.
In 3rd ed, the marine character hits on 3s with up to 6 attacks on the charge and strikes before the guardsmen can fight, killing most in btb contact for no return strikes.
Melee was also more decisive in 3rd onwards, so you could easily then run the unit down with just one character.
In 2nd ed I kept a marine captain in combat for several turns with gretchin due to outnumbering playing such a massive factor in combat resolution.
Just Tony wrote: Just because you didn't see it in your club does not mean it wasn't out there. If a rule set exists, then there will be a plurality of players who seek to exploit it.
GW's Rogue Trader Tournament format used to score not just for tabletop performance, but also for painting, sportsmanship, and army composition, with cheesy/non-fluffy armies (in the eyes of the judges) penalized.
Sure, competitive gaming has always been around, but the way the average player approaches the game has changed. The reasons for that are beyond the scope of this thread, but it's a real thing- and Doc's right, the prevailing attitude in 2nd Ed was what today we would call 'casual'.
Just Tony wrote: Just because you didn't see it in your club does not mean it wasn't out there. If a rule set exists, then there will be a plurality of players who seek to exploit it.
GW's Rogue Trader Tournament format used to score not just for tabletop performance, but also for painting, sportsmanship, and army composition, with cheesy/non-fluffy armies (in the eyes of the judges) penalized.
Sure, competitive gaming has always been around, but the way the average player approaches the game has changed. The reasons for that are beyond the scope of this thread, but it's a real thing- and Doc's right, the prevailing attitude in 2nd Ed was what today we would call 'casual'.
Indeed, the only Grand Tournament winner I can remember, Wai Lam, won because of his overwhelming sportsmanship and army comp score.
Nevelon wrote: Coming off of the herohammer that was 2nd, a lot of people underestimated just what a bunch of marines tapping out a solid bolter drill could do.
Statlines were significantly flattened. Most layered defenses removed. You basically marine was a solid pic and could get work done. I got a lot of use out of tac squads myself.
People love to use the phrase hero hammer for 2nd ed, but I watched characters slaughter just as many if not more people in melee in 3rd onwards.
As per 2nd ed rules, a single model could not fight more than 5-6 other models because they all had to be in btb contact with them. And unless you were marneus calgar, by the time you got to your 5th guardsman, you were facing WS7 with 5 attacks. And although unlikely, a marine character can still lose a melee with a guardsmen even on the first round. WS 7 rolling 2 2s and a 1 against a guardsman rolling 1 6 would have the guardsman winning by 1 - WS3+6+1 from the fumble = 10 vs the marine's 9. The odds improve for every guardsman after that.
In 3rd ed, the marine character hits on 3s with up to 6 attacks on the charge and strikes before the guardsmen can fight, killing most in btb contact for no return strikes.
Melee was also more decisive in 3rd onwards, so you could easily then run the unit down with just one character.
In 2nd ed I kept a marine captain in combat for several turns with gretchin due to outnumbering playing such a massive factor in combat resolution.
I didn’t play a ton of 2nd, but 3rd was probably my most played edition. My impression was not necessarily the offence, but heroes without layered armor/invulnerable/cover/whatever saves just died a lot easier. So while still a beatstick, not an invulnerable one.
^A lot of it was the layered invuln and armor saves, and the other half was the psychic phase and how powerful powers were.
On the whole I think the offensive CC capacities of characters wasn't too far off 2nd aside from the potential morale effects. I admit I can't really remember how Morale resoled in 2nd after fighting though.
Jeez, I know you said it was your favorite, but reading that army list nearly put me in a coma.
I feel ya. But for a guy who loved the theorerical focus on Tactical Squads in codex structure, but never really feeling like I could use them in an actual game, having a list focus on them was pretty great.
Insectum7 wrote: ^A lot of it was the layered invuln and armor saves, and the other half was the psychic phase and how powerful powers were.
On the whole I think the offensive CC capacities of characters wasn't too far off 2nd aside from the potential morale effects. I admit I can't really remember how Morale resoled in 2nd after fighting though.
Outnumbering didn't affect breaking. If you lost 25% of your troops in a single turn (from either or both shooting and CC), you immediately took a break test at your unit's highest Ld level. And you could only take 1 test per turn even if you somehow lost more casualties
A failure means the unit is broken. They then immediately flee 2D6" towards the nearest cover unless they were in cover when they broke in which case they immediately hide. Broken units cannot shoot or CC and if attacked in melee must immediately flee 2D6" again.
There was no run down and no Ld modifiers for being outnumbered. So a single tooled up beatstick in 3rd ed could easily charge, force test and run down an enemy unit while a 2nd ed character couldn't.
Psykers in 2nd were definitely powerful though. The highest level ones usually had better stats (1 extra wound) than the army's general (Chief Librarians had the same stats as captains but +1W, which was a common theme across all armies, the psyker equivalent of the same level would have 1 extra wound than a non psyker).
They were the most expensive characters in the game. Put one in terminator armour with expensive wargear cards and you're looking at 300pts....
^Hmm no Ld mod in 2nd, ok. Thanks for the refresher.
Although for your example for 3rd, a single Character wouldn't be outnumbering anybody, so there wouldn't be any modifiers either. I believe modifiers based on casualties dealt came along in 5th.
*Checking*
There's a single modifier for being below 50% if enough casualties are dealt, in 3rd.
Oh, and whilst I’d need to dig out my Cards to remember exactly what power did what? A Chief Librarian could happily cast stuff like Iron Arm on himself, and The Quickening, and become even more Killy.
Store any unspent Warp Cards in your Psychic Sword/Axe/Rod and boost your strength too.
But it's in the support section not the characters one, probably counting as a vehicle? It's listed as having an Ork driver and the Nob, so it's not quite the same as an independent 
![[Disk]](/dakkaforum/templates/default/images/icon_disk.gif){kind=icon}
