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As dissatisfaction with current editions grows, my group has been experimenting more and more with older editions. We started with 2nd, because it's got that ultra alien ultra old school ultra crazy vibe, and over time we have begun to become a bit more dissatisfied with it, mainly due to...well...the big, huge, glaring balance issues with 2nd edition.

Insta-kill mechanics being everywhere, heavy weapons being so bananas insane crazy powerful that you dont usually in practice even get to use any of your fun zany vehicle damage tables bespoke to each vehicle because a shot from a multi-melta at max range hits every facing on the vehicle you put it over and then fishes for the "it instantly dies" result on 4 different tables, usually getting at least one. Marines being super comically weak because the amount of AP in the game would make late 9th ed blush (-1AP on a lasgun? Seriously??)

After a couple of crazy whacky games getting to grips with the system, people have applied even just the tiniest little bit of tactical decision making to the system (even still running ultra casual old-school armies) and it's reached the point where games are even more decisively lethal than 9th ed/10th ed. Which, to be fair, if you actually go read 2nd ed batreps in white dwarf....holds true for the games GW was playing at the time as well.

So, I'm coming to you, ye great paragons of crusty knowledge: When exactly were 'the good old days'? What was the best codex your faction ever had? We're strongly considering 4th edition as the main core rule set, and trying to decide whether to pick a specific point in time, and use the codex for each faction from that moment, or whether we should choose an "Iconic Codex" for each faction in the range of like 3.5e to 5e, whichever one is most fondly remembered - the 3.5e chaos and imperial guard 'dex, the Witch Hunters dex for sisters, the 5th ed dark eldar dex so they can have their full model range...and possibly trying to use an edition-based points handicap (e.g. 3rd ed player gets X number more pts to play with) if theres a significant imbalance between a 3e book and a 5e book.

What are your thoughts? How do you feel about the various books your faction got between 3-5? Were any of them "The Book"? Are the 3rd ed books universally more fun and we should just use 3e books with 4e rules?

2nd Ed for me, hands down.

The game, the time, the place. All of it just came together. Games in my garage on a cobbled together table, games in the shop.

At that point I was still discovering 40K properly, so every WD or Codex was a trove of new information and inspiration.

Also, whilst Incredibly Wonky, the game was so much fun to play. Blast a turret off a tank and see it land on something, squishing it. Space Marine Chief Librarian in Terminator Armour, on Combat Drugs and with Iron Man just absolutely butchering anything that came near him.

Avatars mulching stuff in combat. Finding an old model at a boot fair, allowing me to field a unit still in my Codex but no longer sold.

Just a really, genuinely happy period in my life.

3rd Ed coincided with me leaving education, so as well as being horribly stripped down, my life situation became much more complex.

3rd to 4th edition codizes + all the Chapter Approved(?) things from White Dwarf at the time like additional rules for abhuman Guard is probably the best 40k ever was in terms of fluff<->rules relation.

4th or 5th core rules were both good and everything from that era should easily be (backwards) compatible.

Go with 3rd or 4th edition, whichever is available for the faction. With notable exception being CSM, which should use 3.5 and Dark Angels which should either just use SM 4th or stay with their 3rd codex supplement.

2nd ed, with heavy terrain and the GT tourney mods GW brought in (limits on characters, VP scoring, no level 3 psychic powers, no silly wargear cards etc.). Still bonkers, but with all the space on the table and enough terrain to allow movement and a decent set of narrative objectives it worked well.

Yeah, my working list at this point is:

Imperial Guard: 3.5e

Chaos Space Marines: 3.5e

Sisters: 3E

Black Templars: 4e

Space Wolves: 5e

Dark Eldar: 5e

Necrons: 3e or 5e (player's choice depending on whether they want the nostalgia oldcron vibes or most of the newcron units)

Tau: Probably 4e

Daemons: Looks like 4e is the only book in this range? Unless they can be fully run out of the 3.5e CSM book.

Ones I'm curious on:

Orks: 3e or 4e? I played a TON with the 4e book over the years but never played with the 3e book because i started in late 4th. Do people have a fondness for the 3e book? Giving it a cursory look thru it doesnt seem crazy fun/thematic like the 3.5e books do.

Nids: 3e, 4e, or 5e. I know there are some *very hated* nid books so I would like to know: Is there one you guys actually LIKED?

Space Marines: Similar question, all I recall is that the 5e book was wildly disliked (mainly due to 5e Space Wolves being Marines But Better For Free) and a TON of marine players in 5e ran "Blue and Gold Space Wolves". So, is the 4th ed book more interesting?


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I understand people have very fond memories for 2nd in general, and it very often comes highly recommended.

We are currently playing quite a bit of 2nd ed. The charm is very much wearing off primarily down to how absolutely nutty every single heavy weapon is. In theory, yes, tank turrets can get blown off and careen out of control and all that fun stuff.

In practice, we're finding, 1 terminator lets 'er rip with an assault cannon and just one-shots a dreadnought no problem.

Similarly, khorne daemons are a problem. They are just the very essence of not fun to play against at all.

Yeah, the dirty secret about all the old editions is that there is a lot of jank, and some fo it is pretty unavoidable.

2nd Edition is wildly unbalanced, and so you either need to acept that or play a very stripped down version.

3rd edition is really three different editions. you had core 3rd with just the big black book army lists, you had core 3rd with the codexes, and then you had the trial vehicle/trial assault rules with the codexes plus the late 3rd (3.5) era codexes. Either go pure core rulebook, or use every rule ever written for 3rd. Even then it's a bit wonky, assault is VERY strong, and there isn't a ton of flavor until the 3.5 codexes.

4th edition had a couple of bonkers codexes (Nidzill and codex assault cannon) and the most punishing rules for transports. was the only edition to try to allow for unit heights with terrain.

5th edition veered back to vehicles being too good, and if you had a 4th editoin codex they were often too cheap. Rules allocation allowed for SHENANIGANS. Codex creep was real, with Gaurd, Wolves, and Grey kinghts becoming increasingly bonkers good.

6th/7th editions were messes for well documented reasons. Balance, ease of play, coherent looking armies: not required.

I think that with the right group, a late 3rd edition campaign could be a lot of fun. There was a lot of content available which you could splash in.

My super secret opinion: most of the time, the dopamine hit you want from playing an older edition could be captured with a homebrew set of Crusage rules.

Having been an ORK player since 1st edition, anything after 2nd was a stripped down and dull comparison to the army’s old glory. 3rd butchered ORKS so badly they are still recovering today 7 editions later. Overnight ORKS became one dimensional and boring as hell.

Space Marines are actually an awkward problem; I loved the 4e book's organization and structure, but there were also spots where pricing didn't make a lot of sense, and I do think if you're going to allow the 5e Space Wolf book you'll still have the "wait, why am I taking normal SM when the SW book is just better?" problem (e.g. paying 50pts instead of 35pts for the exact same Rhino). I don't have a comprehensive list handy for you, oldhammer has fallen by the wayside a bit in favor of Heresy for me, but I do think there are points tweaks you could make to the 4e SM books (regular, BT, DA) to make them line up better with the 5e stuff.

Also I have thoughts on flyers I don't have time to share right now; will write down specifics later, but the short version is that the 3e FW/4e Apocalypse version was actually really cool and let them be an interesting thing that the 5e flyers-as-skimmers and 6e invincible tanks version completely lost; I know plenty of people would prefer to forget flyers existed, but I think there's room for them, even in the smaller scale of older editions.


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 Polonius wrote:
...5th edition veered back to vehicles being too good, and if you had a 4th editoin codex they were often too cheap...

Other way 'round, 5e vehicles were better and 5e Codexes often included big price drops for vehicles over their 4e counterparts.

In my local group we usually do retrohammer with 5th Ed core rules and 3rd-4th codices.

5th Ed has solid core rules once you place a large stick on the table and make it clear that anyone who pulls wound allocation shenanigans will be beaten with it.

But not using 5th Ed codices avoids the creep and escalation in scale that defines that era.

For my enjoyment levels, i should keep in kind 2nd Ed came and went pre-internet. So I was only exposed to a tiny sliver of the community. And we were all on pretty much the same “fun is king” wavelength.

Come 3rd Ed? I was on Portent. And that’s when I discovered the WAAC crowd, the polar opposite of the community I originally came up with.

Seeing people focus solely on Beardy Armies and how to best abuse rules punched a lot of the fun out of it for me, especially once that approach started manifesting in my local store.

It started to feel like something I did solely for fun was being taken far too seriously, despite the distinct lack of stakes involved. Genuine example? Being told that unless I attended a hypothetical game, with my army math hammered and Netlisted to buggery, and prepared to bend the rules to breaking point to? I was “disrespecting my opponent”.

I was pretty young at the time (18), so wasn’t particularly mature. So to add to Fun Sponges online, I myself became a Fun Extractor, as I spent far, far too much time online in utterly pointless arguments over who was doing what wrong. Over the years I worked for GW a few times, and eventually encountered a young crowd who demanded every game follow their preferred tournament house rules, because “every game is tournament practice”. Now, between themselves? They booked the table, they can knock themselves out. But for more random match ups? That demand became ever more frustrating. And when I’d thrash them with my Unusual “this shouldn’t work, but boy does it!” Lists? Such sore losers. Apparently I only ever “diced them”, with no regard to the fact I knew my armies inside out, especially their weaknesses, and so could really work my ticket. My themes usually left glaring deficiencies, which I knew how to cover, or at least best mitigate, whilst also squeezing the most out of what was strong in my list.

That competitive mindset is of course fine. Not my taste, but not my business when it’s someone else’s hobby. But married to such poor sportsmanship, it really used to irk me, to the point I just didn’t want to play against them.

Come 2010, life really kicked into gear (homeless for a year, then working in different towns up and down the country, before finally settling into my current career which involved length weekday commutes) and I lost all real contact with the reality of the game, because I just never had the time or opportunity to play.

Hence, 2nd Ed has a lot of rose tinting to it, even before the Baby and Bathwater approach of 3rd, which was admittedly slowly undone over subsequent editions.

I'm certainly not trying to tell you that you didn't have a good time, but one thing that people (myself included) do is to look back at being young and playing games with friends and decided that what made it special was the specific rule set used, and not being young and playing with friends.

If you have a good group of friends, you can have a great time playing anything.


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 catbarf wrote:
In my local group we usually do retrohammer with 5th Ed core rules and 3rd-4th codices.

5th Ed has solid core rules once you place a large stick on the table and make it clear that anyone who pulls wound allocation shenanigans will be beaten with it.

But not using 5th Ed codices avoids the creep and escalation in scale that defines that era.

Probably not a terrible idea, especially since with the prices of vehicles in 3.5 they work pretty well with 5th edition vehicle rules.

That thread comes around regularly and I feel that most of the time, looks like overall 4th and 5th edition come up in the first places.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
That thread comes around regularly and I feel that most of the time, looks like overall 4th and 5th edition come up in the first places.

Generally true.

One problem when talking about prior editions is nostalgia glasses and if any of the pros/cons are dealbreaers.

I, for example, prefer abstract LoS, so favor the earlier editions. 5th, while a pretty tight ruleset, had some bad (IMHO) wound allocation rules the soured things.

Other people prefer true LoS, etc.

Abstract Los and strong Assault rules is one thing causing me to lean towards 4e over 5e. One of the main points of dissatisfaction with our games of 2e is the extreme deadlines of shooting and the seeming inability of any melee army or units to work outside of the bananas fuckery of khorne.

The only draw of including any 5e content is the second issue we are running into: many people feeling left out as their armies don't really properly exist in 2e.

Even tau and dark Eldar are not included, and necrons are just 3 units. Orks, guard, Eldar and gsc are having great fun and one guy is goofing around with pirates using kharadron overlord and necromunda models. But the SMs are grumbling about how bad SMs suck and they can't win at all, and nobody has a good time playing the Daemon player because their rules are like bananas super necron melee monsters.


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So the only desire to include any 5e codex content is just to get a couple more factions (drukhari and necrons) feeling "real".

The thing to note about the 3rd ed Ork book is that while the codex itself was an early one and pretty stripped down, Orks did get expansion army lists in the form of Feral Orks and Speed Freaks later in the edition. They wound up with a lot more potential variety during later 3rd ed and into 4th. Also Boyz were more expensive, but also more dangerous. Choppas were nasty.

The 4th ed Marine codex is, IMO, the best they ever made from a customization and unit roster standpoint. The custom chapter rules were great, and it was pre Sternguard-combiweapon-spam wonkiness. You could also pepper Veteran abilities around, which was nice. The real reason to choose the 5th ed book was that SMs got Frag, Krak, and Bolt Pistols as default wargear again, and Combat Squads was reintroduced. My ideal would be so mash those books together.

Regarding nids you probably want the 4th ed codex, it's awesome in the customisability you get. I had fun with the third ed one too, though it was a bit more restricted. I still haven't forgiven cruddace for the 5th ed dex.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Abstract Los and strong Assault rules is one thing causing me to lean towards 4e over 5e. One of the main points of dissatisfaction with our games of 2e is the extreme deadlines of shooting and the seeming inability of any melee army or units to work outside of the bananas fuckery of khorne.

I hate to say it, but this sorta reads like a "need more terrain" moment. If there's more Hard Cover (giving that -2 to hit), the Space Marine Ballistic Skill (and Targeters on Heavy Weapons) starts to kick in and have a big effect on the outcomes of firefights. When Guardians are only hitting on 6s and Marines are hitting on 5s with Bolters and 4s with their Heavy Bolters, the tables turn around real quick. And if there's more LOS blocking terrain, not only will assault armies will have an easier time, but the Grenades that every Marine comes with will start to come more into play.


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Oh, I think the options for Looted Vehicles were much better for Orks in their 3rd ed book.

Sorry to wibble on, but another thought occurred.

White Dwarf.

The 2nd Ed Period was arguably WD’s heyday. It had decent battle reports, hobby articles and more often than not new rules for WHFB, 40K and/or Epic.

Whilst undeniably still a fancy catalogue, it just didn’t quite serve the same purpose after 2nd Ed 40K and Epic were wrapped up.

OP, to be fair, if you pick any 3 to 7th edition you can quote happily pit any codex of the era against one another.

I do it quite often, latest example being playing codex catachan versus count-as-ed GSC IN 6th.

You only need a couple of adjustments, mostly applying the latest point cost for a mini (usually everything is cheaper the further towards 7th you go, so try to use these points costs so everyone is more or less on par). Few adjustments to special rules when they do not exist in that edition (usually fairly easy, just use whatever special rule is closest in your edition or make up one for the case.).

If you go to "post pic of the last game you played", you'll see that reading the like of "5th guard Vs 3rd Orks, 4th edition" is quite common.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Sorry to wibble on, but another thought occurred.

White Dwarf.

The 2nd Ed Period was arguably WD’s heyday. It had decent battle reports, hobby articles and more often than not new rules for WHFB, 40K and/or Epic.

Whilst undeniably still a fancy catalogue, it just didn’t quite serve the same purpose after 2nd Ed 40K and Epic were wrapped up.

3rd was also a solid era for WD. Still new rules, fleshing out the fluff that was not included in the slim codexes, battle reports, tale of 4 gamers. Lots of great stuff.

I’d have to check when I stopped collecting, but know I’ve got all the WDs from late 2nd to into 4th at the very least.

 the_scotsman wrote:
Abstract Los and strong Assault rules is one thing causing me to lean towards 4e over 5e. One of the main points of dissatisfaction with our games of 2e is the extreme deadlines of shooting and the seeming inability of any melee army or units to work outside of the bananas fuckery of khorne.

The only draw of including any 5e content is the second issue we are running into: many people feeling left out as their armies don't really properly exist in 2e.

Even tau and dark Eldar are not included, and necrons are just 3 units. Orks, guard, Eldar and gsc are having great fun and one guy is goofing around with pirates using kharadron overlord and necromunda models. But the SMs are grumbling about how bad SMs suck and they can't win at all, and nobody has a good time playing the Daemon player because their rules are like bananas super necron melee monsters.


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So the only desire to include any 5e codex content is just to get a couple more factions (drukhari and necrons) feeling "real".

I'm no grognard, but I've been getting my play-group to do 3rd with me, and from what I've collected, the only modern 40k armies without rules is Knights, Custodes, and Admech. Oh and votaan I guess, though all could easily be counts-as other factions (Daemonhunters, Elite Guard/Sisters), besides knights. Knights you could probably just use the vehicle design rules for and run them in one of the other lists.

3rd I never liked because it’s Assault Rules were just too good. Sweeping Advance or Follow Up from fight to fight. Blood Angels being into combat super quickly. And unlike shooting, you get to break faces twice a game turn, every game turn.

Also, that was when certain armies started to have one or two really effective lists, with everything else being naff.

Consider Eldar. They’re often misconstrued as often having overpowered Codexes. But that’s not quite the truth. Every Eldar codex has absolutely had horrific lists that could be made. And they cropped up quite often. Except…that was because everything else was crap.

Aspect Warriors in particular really suffered. In 1st and 2nd, they were fragile as Eldar usually are, but hit like an absolute tonne of bricks. 3rd Ed? Not so much a Glass Hammer, as a Non-Newtonian Physics Hammer Except When It Hit You It Bounced Off Then Shattered. Add in typically small unit sizes at a time when Orks and Nids were getting Proper Hordey in squad and scope, and you’ve got a recipe for utter disaster.

And that’s before we discuss the utter, utter nonsense of making the Shuriken Catapult 12” range, all but guaranteeing one probably, on balance, compared to any other small arm, semi-decent round of shooting, before your opponent kicked your teeth down your delicate throat.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
. Space Marine Chief Librarian in Terminator Armour, on Combat Drugs and with Iron Man just absolutely butchering anything that came near him.
.

I remember time when guy came with all maxed marine character. I shot unit he was and then tied him in melee killing rest of game unit of 10 as i didn't allow him more than 1-2 model per turn max kills.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

And that’s before we discuss the utter, utter nonsense of making the Shuriken Catapult 12” range, all but guaranteeing one probably, on balance, compared to any other small arm, semi-decent round of shooting, before your opponent kicked your teeth down your delicate throat.

I will defend the 12" Catapult because of it's context next to the other Rapid Fire weapons, especially in 3rd ed, because in 3rd ed a Bolter could move and fire once, and you could not Assault. The Catapult being able to be fired twice, and then Assault afterwards, created an incredible differentiation between how those troops could operate. That meaningful differentiation just degraded so heavily over time as Rapid Fire weapons became easier to shoot on the move, and Marines were given pistols. The 12" Catapult made some sense within the 3rd ed paradigm, but by 5th ed it should have been pushed to 18".

I'd argue that the real problem was that certain units, looking at you Blood Angels, would be assaulting from well beyond 12". When models are successfully charging you from beyond your basic weapons ranges that sucks.

You could assault, that’s true. But assaulting anything with Guardians was hardly a solid tactic. WS3, S3, A1 didn’t do an awful lot of damage after all.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
You could assault, that’s true. But assaulting anything with Guardians was hardly a solid tactic. WS3, S3, A1 didn’t do an awful lot of damage after all.

True . . . but Guardians would get 4 attacks each in their total maneuver. 2 From the Catapult, then 2 again in the Assault (+1 from the charge). If Marines made an Assault they got 2 on the charge. . . and that was it. Plus I think the idea is that you'd rarely be charging in alone anyways. You'd ideally be using the Guardians in support of an Aspect charge or something. But also just think about how effective against Guardsmen that is, too! Your eldar basic troops could tear it up against GEQ types.

I just think that the small-unit maneuvering game of the 3rd ed era was super strong. The 12" Catapult was part of that. But yeah, if you think about it, on the move Marines can only shoot at pistol range, right? It's kind of a strange paradigm.

But yes, I will completely agree that it was a huge and jarring shift away from 2nd edition, and I do miss those Guardians firing Shuriken Catapults at 24" while sitting behind patches of lichen.

Thing is, that’s all Guardians could really do. And in a mass combat, it’s not the Guardians I’d be attacking if I had a choice.

They wound up as ablative wounds for the Starcannon. That was their role.

^Lol, that's because the Starcannon made Eldar easy mode by only costing 10 points or whatever.

Regarding 2e, the issue is that Marines and 2e overall is a completely different wargame than you're likely used to, because tactical modifiers are so important. You noted lasguns have -1 AP, so yes, Space Marine lists without terminators will get torn to pieces by guardsmen in a direct shooting match. That's why you don't fight fair, you fight dirty. If you pay attention to their rules Space Marines have autosenses which allows them to completely ignore the effects of smoke grenades. The play style of 2e space marines, barring characters with void grenade antics, is to be a whole lot more tactical and precise than later editions. You don't just form a gunline and shred the enemy in a shooting match. You take cover, you pop smoke religiously so most enemies can't see anything while your units can gun them down easily. You mention melee is a joke and that's correct, Marines being melee happy was an evolution of 40k over time indulging in being more and more self referential. Marines circa 1e and 2e still are Marines, not knights.

To me the best old edition is probably a stitched together version of 4th and 5th. For example 5th fixed the issues vehicles had in 4th, but then overcorrected by also buffing them in the codices with reduced points costs etc. Off the top of my head a Chimera in the 3.5 dex was 90-100 points once you picked your guns, while in 5th it was....55? 65? The combination of them deciding to fix vehicles both in core rules AND pricepoints just overdid it a little bit.

The plus side is, since all these editions are related, you can used the books from 3rd-7th just fine, you will need to tweak things however - some bits are easy like remove hull points or look at the usr a model has and translate it into what that rule would be for the current edition. The harder bit is unit prices as in general points per models were higher the farther back you go, so using the skitaari/admech or genestealer cults from 7th you will probably need to within your playgroup play with their points costs in order to make it fun for everyone.