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Guard also made it worse by having both a cheap plasma unit with the veterans and long range plasma blasts spammer with the executioner. I still remember one of such tanks simply deleting a full strenght Plague Marine unit.

That codex really was designed to soft brake 5th ed rules.

 Tyran wrote:
Guard also made it worse by having both a cheap plasma unit with the veterans and long range plasma blasts spammer with the executioner. I still remember one of such tanks simply deleting a full strenght Plague Marine unit.
That codex really was designed to soft brake 5th ed rules.

The executioner was just three guardsmen with plasmacannons standing on a tank. At least it had the decency to give you cover saves and not to lash of submission your squad into a blast-marker shaped formation before shooting you :p

Despite Cruddace increasing its firepower threefold from the original forgeworld rules it was arguably one of his more restrained units...

 Haighus wrote:
Armour penetration does work differently on armoured vehicles vs body armour. Generally, if you don't penetrate an armoured vehicle it is probably fine unless the blast was especially powerful.

Another important difference is that tanks are actually very brittle, you can think of them as armored eggs. They ignore anything that cannot penetrate their armor, but once something penetrates tanks just die, not the old nonsense of roll D6 and nothing important happens half the time and/or lose an HP/wound.

A human suffering a wound shot can survive depending on shot placement. A tank suffering a penetrating hit simply cannot survive outside of borderline divine intervention.

That is also why modern tank doctrine depends a lot on infantry to screen enemy AT teams, cover and/or mobility to avoid direct hits. The popular idea of a tank simply ignoring everything the enemy throws at it may be true against small arms but quickly becomes a fantasy once dedicated AT weaponry is involved. Which is also why it is also not uncommon for people to abandon* tanks when morale breaks, tanks are metal coffins and the first thing to die when things go wrong.

But obviusly the above is kinda hard to design around because people don't like their tanks immediately exploding to a lascannon even though that is the "realistic" outcome.

*BTW the old morale rules would have benefited from morale impacting vehicles beyond the damage table, with crews abandoning tanks being a possibility.

The 5th Ed Guard codex is one of the big reasons why I am a proponent of 5th Ed core rules with 3.5-4th codices if you want to do oldhammer.

I think a big part of the negative perception of 5th comes from the codices that not only created codex creep, but violated some of the subtle but important design principles that enabled the game to work. It wasn't just that the Guard codex was powerful, it's that they got AP3 on Stormtroopers, plasma gun spam on Veterans, greater access to AP3 blasts on non-Ordnance weapons, aircraft in the core codex, 3 tanks per Heavy Support choice, orders to magnify their effectiveness and avoid Gets Hot, and it all added up to an incredibly oppressive package.

It completely threw out the tradeoffs and limitations that had been established in prior editions, where high-AP had strong downsides (Gets Hot, Ordnance, short range, and/or low volume) and high-armor vehicles were sharply limited. It broke the game, and subsequent codices just continued the trend.

Wind back to before all that, and 5th Ed is a solid ruleset.

 Tyran wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Armour penetration does work differently on armoured vehicles vs body armour. Generally, if you don't penetrate an armoured vehicle it is probably fine unless the blast was especially powerful.

Another important difference is that tanks are actually very brittle, you can think of them as armored eggs. They ignore anything that cannot penetrate their armor, but once something penetrates tanks just die, not the old nonsense of roll D6 and nothing important happens half the time and/or lose an HP/wound.

A human suffering a wound shot can survive depending on shot placement. A tank suffering a penetrating hit simply cannot survive outside of borderline divine intervention.

That is also why modern tank doctrine depends a lot on infantry to screen enemy AT teams, cover and/or mobility to avoid direct hits. The popular idea of a tank simply ignoring everything the enemy throws at it may be true against small arms but quickly becomes a fantasy once dedicated AT weaponry is involved. Which is also why it is also not uncommon for people to abandon* tanks when morale breaks, tanks are metal coffins and the first thing to die when things go wrong.

But obviusly the above is kinda hard to design around because people don't like their tanks immediately exploding to a lascannon even though that is the "realistic" outcome.

*BTW the old morale rules would have benefited from morale impacting vehicles beyond the damage table, with crews abandoning tanks being a possibility.

Tanks can be incapacitated. Optics, tracks, ammunition depending on the tanks layout, are prone to being shattered by fire that may not even penetrate. The crew can be stunned by impact or stuff flying inside. And it is hard to determine what's going on outside of a tank so I'd bet you'd have a hard time knowing what's having a go at you and how well equipped it might be to deal with you. (I bet because i never was in a firefight, but training in Leclerc tank it was definitely hard to keep track of whatever was going on and whether it where flares or blank grenades or polish blank 125mm shells going off, all is quite muffled and you can't see gak half the time. Sooo...).

BA has got a very good representation of this encompassing both destruction by hit or fire resulting from a hit, and damages both mental and physical on the crew thanks to the pin mecanic.

A.T. wrote:
Despite Cruddace increasing its firepower threefold from the original forgeworld rules it was arguably one of his more restrained units...

The FW unit had a large blast instead of 3 small blasts, and a longer range. I think that made it a better analogue to the standard Leman Russ, and felt like more of a fun switch then. The 5th edition version was a bit nuts, although it did cost >200pts if you took plasma sponsons.

Tyran wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Armour penetration does work differently on armoured vehicles vs body armour. Generally, if you don't penetrate an armoured vehicle it is probably fine unless the blast was especially powerful.

Another important difference is that tanks are actually very brittle. They ignore anything that cannot penetrate their armor, but once something penetrates tanks just die, not the old nonsense of roll D6 and nothing important happens half the time and/or lose an HP/wound.

A human suffering a wound shot can survive depending on shot placement. A tank suffering a penetrating hit simply cannot survive outside of borderline divine intervention.

That is also why modern tank doctrine depends a lot on infantry to screen enemy AT teams, cover and/or mobility to avoid direct hits. The popular idea of a tank simply ignoring everything the enemy throws at it may be true against small arms but quickly becomes a fantasy once dedicated AT weaponry is involved. Which is also why it is also not uncommon for people to abandon* tanks when morale breaks, tanks are metal coffins and the first thing to die when things go wrong.

But obviusly the above is kinda hard to design around because people don't like their tanks immediately exploding to a lascannon even though that is the "realistic" outcome.

*BTW the old morale rules would have benefited from morale impacting vehicles beyond the damage table, with crews abandoning tanks being a possibility.

Well, if you look at the tables, I think it can be rationalised as only the wrecked and explodes results being true penetrating hits, witha weapon destroyed result just taking off a gun but not penetrating the crew compartment, an immobilised doing the same for the motive system, and shaken/stunned representing near misses rather than true penetrations.

I think the increase in lethality you mention above occurred during WWII, although it wasn't complete by the end of the war. The average crew lost per knocked out Sherman was about 1, for example.

Also, tanks being vulnerable doesn't mean they die to the first antitank weapon- it can still take multiple shots before one hits the vulnerable point. Also, crew abandoning tanks are often not any safer, especially if the tanks are being attacked by things like artillery or aircraft where being inside the tank requires a direct hot to kill, but outside is vulnerable to shrapnel.

A.T. wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
By 5th edition plasma guns always fired one shot to 24" and two to 12", even if they moved, and only ever blew up on a 1. Other special weapons got no improvement.

IIRC it was a mixed bag with melta being so important for hitting vehicles in 5th.
But the rapid fire change was big for attacks after disembarking and deepstriking (or rather deepstriking sternguard, since chaos terminators were already running plasmacide in 4th).

I think I get the reason for the change though as it did give an incentive to move into charge range and risk the attacking unit. In 3rd edition if you were just outside of charge range you'd sit there for two turns shooting instead, or one turn shooting and one turn backing up while shooting.

Yeah, meltaguns maintained a use case, but plasma becoming the allrounder weapon makes sense when you see the buffs to rapid fire weapons that assault weapons didn't get. Pistol weapons got actively nerfed by losing two shots when stationary, although there was a couple of editions where models could shoot two pistols if they had them.

I don't think this is a problem unique to plasma guns, it generally increased lethality when basic small arms chucked out considerably more shots whilst on the move. But plasma guns were powerful and spammable for some armies.

I'd also add that from what I try to look, external additive armour is strictly superior to standard composite armour as it actually counter acts the shot and help have it go bang a little furhter from the tanks main hull. Obviously never 100 proof, but probably better.

 catbarf wrote:
It completely threw out the tradeoffs and limitations that had been established in prior editions, where high-AP had strong downsides (Gets Hot, Ordnance, short range, and/or low volume) and high-armor vehicles were sharply limited. It broke the game, and subsequent codices just continued the trend.

*checks 5th Ed Guard Codex on Lexicanium*

Oh. Robin Cruddace you say?

What a shock.

When he's not busy fething over Tyranids, he's knee-deep in making his fav faction the best in the game. He's like the Pete Haines of modern 40k.

 Haighus wrote:
I don't think this is a problem unique to plasma guns, it generally increased lethality when basic small arms chucked out considerably more shots whilst on the move. But plasma guns were powerful and spammable for some armies.

The 'on the move' change I think cut both ways with small arms when you put your unit within automatic charge range and your opponent had no obligation to remove the nearest models.
It was a choice to take a risk to get a reward, while old rapid fire you'd stand and shoot and then your opponent would get to move up and get shot... and then without run in the old editions you'd either shoot them twice or back up and repeat step 1.

Where plasma in 4th/5th edition fell over was regular infantry jumping out of vehicles and deepstrike with twice as many plasma shots. While they did increase the price of it in 5th the vehicles and deepstrike became more practical and plasma itself became more spamable.
In retrospect perhaps I didn't notice it so much at the time as we had a number of chaos players locally and they had been dropping double-shot plasma forever - at 5pts a model on their terminators in 4e they were actually cheaper than 5e sternguard drops up to a point.

 catbarf wrote:
It completely threw out the tradeoffs and limitations that had been established in prior editions, where high-AP had strong downsides (Gets Hot, Ordnance, short range, and/or low volume) and high-armor vehicles were sharply limited. It broke the game, and subsequent codices just continued the trend.

Sounds like the 3.5 chaos codex :p

Say what you will for Ward but he at least tried to break every single codex he got his hands on. Cruddace played favourites - when he was assigned the 5e sisters of battle he couldn't even be bothered to change the unit costs on his copy/pasted command unit and in his online 'making of' blog on the GW website he managed to put down the black and white base-coat on about four models before decided he couldn't be bothered and packed it all in.

A.T. wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
I don't think this is a problem unique to plasma guns, it generally increased lethality when basic small arms chucked out considerably more shots whilst on the move. But plasma guns were powerful and spammable for some armies.

The 'on the move' change I think cut both ways with small arms when you put your unit within automatic charge range and your opponent had no obligation to remove the nearest models.
It was a choice to take a risk to get a reward, while old rapid fire you'd stand and shoot and then your opponent would get to move up and get shot... and then without run in the old editions you'd either shoot them twice or back up and repeat step 1.

Where plasma in 4th/5th edition fell over was regular infantry jumping out of vehicles and deepstrike with twice as many plasma shots. While they did increase the price of it in 5th the vehicles and deepstrike became more practical and plasma itself became more spamable.
In retrospect perhaps I didn't notice it so much at the time as we had a number of chaos players locally and they had been dropping double-shot plasma forever - at 5pts a model on their terminators in 4e they were actually cheaper than 5e sternguard drops up to a point.

True, but they got that increased flexibility for no additional drawbacks. In addition, the move and shoot out to 24" was also important. It increased the threat range out to 30".

As a balance thing, assault and heavy got nothing (until snap shots on moving towards the end) and pistols got worse.

 catbarf wrote:
It completely threw out the tradeoffs and limitations that had been established in prior editions, where high-AP had strong downsides (Gets Hot, Ordnance, short range, and/or low volume) and high-armor vehicles were sharply limited. It broke the game, and subsequent codices just continued the trend.

Sounds like the 3.5 chaos codex :p

Say what you will for Ward but he at least tried to break every single codex he got his hands on. Cruddace played favourites - when he was assigned the 5e sisters of battle he couldn't even be bothered to change the unit costs on his copy/pasted command unit and in his online 'making of' blog on the GW website he managed to put down the black and white base-coat on about four models before decided he couldn't be bothered and packed it all in.

I still think Ward made good codices. It was his lore that was... spotty.

A.T. wrote:
Sounds like the 3.5 chaos codex :p

It absolutely does. It's no lie that Pete Haines made Iron Warriors the strongest. It's why I mentioned him in my last post.

But 3.5 was so much more than Iron Warriors.

 Haighus wrote:
True, but they got that increased flexibility for no additional drawbacks. In addition, the move and shoot out to 24" was also important. It increased the threat range out to 30".

6th edition was move and shoot 30"

4th and 5th edition were move and shoot twice at 12" or stand still for one shot at max range
3rd edition was move and shoot once at 12", or twice if stationary at 12", or once if stationary at max range

The 6e change was ill advised IMO. The 4e change I can see as well intentioned to encourage clashes over back-stepping gunlines but the dismount/deepstrike benefits are unfortunate.

A.T. wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
True, but they got that increased flexibility for no additional drawbacks. In addition, the move and shoot out to 24" was also important. It increased the threat range out to 30".

6th edition was move and shoot 30"

4th and 5th edition were move and shoot twice at 12" or stand still for one shot at max range
3rd edition was move and shoot once at 12", or twice if stationary at 12", or once if stationary at max range

The 6e change was ill advised IMO. The 4e change I can see as well intentioned to encourage clashes over back-stepping gunlines but the dismount/deepstrike benefits are unfortunate.

I liked the 3rd ed rapid fire best, there was at least a trade-off between assault and rapid fire weapons. An assault 2 12" shuriken catapult was sort of comparable to a bolter because with the catapult you could fire twice on the move and still charge (disregarding that fluff-wise you really wouldn't want to get that close with typical catapult-wielding units).

The backstepping/kiting was definitely a thing though. Back then you needed a special rule to run in the shooting phase that only fast units got ("fleet of x"). I remember having my last remaining screamer killer kited to death by my opponent's last remaining couple of terminators with an assault cannon. There was simply no way it could catch up.

Not sure how 5th holds up rules-wise, it's been too long and too many editions. I did dislike 5th's melee morale resolution rules though (pretty sure it was 5th), the one where you take extra casualties if you lose combat while being fearless. I can't say if it was balanced or not, but it felt like a huge nerf for stuff like hormagaunts.

shortymcnostrill wrote:
I did dislike 5th's melee morale resolution rules though (pretty sure it was 5th), the one where you take extra casualties if you lose combat while being fearless. I can't say if it was balanced or not, but it felt like a huge nerf for stuff like hormagaunts.

In 5e fearless units took wounds for how much they lost the combat by, in 4e you took wounds based on how outnumbered you were.

shortymcnostrill wrote:
I liked the 3rd ed rapid fire best, there was at least a trade-off between assault and rapid fire weapons. An assault 2 12" shuriken catapult was sort of comparable to a bolter because with the catapult you could fire twice on the move and still charge (disregarding that fluff-wise you really wouldn't want to get that close with typical catapult-wielding units).

The backstepping/kiting was definitely a thing though. Back then you needed a special rule to run in the shooting phase that only fast units got ("fleet of x"). I remember having my last remaining screamer killer kited to death by my opponent's last remaining couple of terminators with an assault cannon. There was simply no way it could catch up.

Not sure how 5th holds up rules-wise, it's been too long and too many editions. I did dislike 5th's melee morale resolution rules though (pretty sure it was 5th), the one where you take extra casualties if you lose combat while being fearless. I can't say if it was balanced or not, but it felt like a huge nerf for stuff like hormagaunts.

From a design perspective I liked that the sharp limitations on Rapid Fire weapons in 3rd Ed gave the Assault type a reason to exist. It meant you might actually consider, say, putting shotguns on IG Veterans, so instead of 1 shot on the move you'd get 2, even though you'd never want to charge into melee. At the same time, it felt odd that armies like Marines, which would want to get in combat when appropriate, were incentivized to hold still in gunlines to maximize firepower. It really should have been an 'all-rounder' weapon type, but instead greatly favored static shooting.

Rather than allow Rapid Fire to shoot twice at half range whether moving or not, I think a better iteration might have been to allow a unit that only fired one shot (whether it moved or not) to still charge. Assault would remain ideal for full firepower on the move, and Rapid Fire wouldn't allow piling out of a transport or deep strike and immediately double-firing, but flexible units like Tactical Marines would have the option to shoot (just one shot apiece) and then finish the job in melee.

Anyways, kiting was definitely A Thing but I think that only became a major issue with kill-em-all missions. If you had to hold objectives it was a lot harder to keep running and whittling those monstrous creatures down. I do remember it being difficult to catch tanks in melee, though; and monstrous creatures always had the issue of too few attacks to deal with tarpitting.

 catbarf wrote:
Rather than allow Rapid Fire to shoot twice at half range whether moving or not, I think a better iteration might have been to allow a unit that only fired one shot (whether it moved or not) to still charge

To an extent this was a thing in 5th (from 4e chaos onwards) where mixed role units like marines had 12" pistols while more gunline units like guard and necrons only had their rapid fire weapon. Would have combined well with 3e rapid fire.

Rather than allow Rapid Fire to shoot twice at half range whether moving or not, I think a better iteration might have been to allow a unit that only fired one shot (whether it moved or not) to still charge. Assault would remain ideal for full firepower on the move, and Rapid Fire wouldn't allow piling out of a transport or deep strike and immediately double-firing, but flexible units like Tactical Marines would have the option to shoot (just one shot apiece) and then finish the job in melee.

Would this be any functionally different than using a bolt pistol before charging?
Or was giving tactical marines a bolt pistol a later invention?

edit: I guess it would matter for guardsmen, the other ubiquitous "I have a rapid fire gun" archetype.

 Rihgu wrote:
Would this be any functionally different than using a bolt pistol before charging?
Or was giving tactical marines a bolt pistol a later invention?

Both - a marine armed with a bolt pistol and plasma gun would only get to shoot the bolt pistol before charging, and bolt pistols were not freebies until the 4e chaos codex (late-ish 4th).

For 7th and 8th, the biggest flaw in the Formation plan was….not all Formations were equal.

Army A might need to take specific, already useful units and they’d all get free Wargear and/or transports.

Army B? Fairly random selection of stuff and your HQ got to re-roll a single roll of 1, once per game if you were playing on a Wednesday which was an even numbered day in an odd numbered month, during a leap year.

Although apocalypse and tank war (how's it called again?) Supplement formation are fine I think. Used them a few time and all went well. Fairly limited in nature and had to pay for it though.

A.T. wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:
Would this be any functionally different than using a bolt pistol before charging?
Or was giving tactical marines a bolt pistol a later invention?

Both - a marine armed with a bolt pistol and plasma gun would only get to shoot the bolt pistol before charging, and bolt pistols were not freebies until the 4e chaos codex (late-ish 4th).

True, I was too close-minded about this. I think my brain must've went to 30k tactical marines or forgot plasma was an option for tactical marines back then.

 catbarf wrote:

shortymcnostrill wrote:
I liked the 3rd ed rapid fire best, there was at least a trade-off between assault and rapid fire weapons. An assault 2 12" shuriken catapult was sort of comparable to a bolter because with the catapult you could fire twice on the move and still charge (disregarding that fluff-wise you really wouldn't want to get that close with typical catapult-wielding units).

The backstepping/kiting was definitely a thing though. Back then you needed a special rule to run in the shooting phase that only fast units got ("fleet of x"). I remember having my last remaining screamer killer kited to death by my opponent's last remaining couple of terminators with an assault cannon. There was simply no way it could catch up.

Not sure how 5th holds up rules-wise, it's been too long and too many editions. I did dislike 5th's melee morale resolution rules though (pretty sure it was 5th), the one where you take extra casualties if you lose combat while being fearless. I can't say if it was balanced or not, but it felt like a huge nerf for stuff like hormagaunts.

From a design perspective I liked that the sharp limitations on Rapid Fire weapons in 3rd Ed gave the Assault type a reason to exist. It meant you might actually consider, say, putting shotguns on IG Veterans, so instead of 1 shot on the move you'd get 2, even though you'd never want to charge into melee. At the same time, it felt odd that armies like Marines, which would want to get in combat when appropriate, were incentivized to hold still in gunlines to maximize firepower. It really should have been an 'all-rounder' weapon type, but instead greatly favored static shooting.

Rather than allow Rapid Fire to shoot twice at half range whether moving or not, I think a better iteration might have been to allow a unit that only fired one shot (whether it moved or not) to still charge. Assault would remain ideal for full firepower on the move, and Rapid Fire wouldn't allow piling out of a transport or deep strike and immediately double-firing, but flexible units like Tactical Marines would have the option to shoot (just one shot apiece) and then finish the job in melee.

Anyways, kiting was definitely A Thing but I think that only became a major issue with kill-em-all missions. If you had to hold objectives it was a lot harder to keep running and whittling those monstrous creatures down. I do remember it being difficult to catch tanks in melee, though; and monstrous creatures always had the issue of too few attacks to deal with tarpitting.

I think it is much easier to just add free pistols for those flexible units, and leave shooty-focussed units as less mobile. Especially as the actual pistol models in 40k really look more like compact SMGs/PDWs.

In addition, I think tanks being hard to catch in melee and monstrous creatures being tarpitted is fine. The former makes sense and is still limited by terrain and space, and the latter is a reasonable counter for an otherwise pretty effective unit type. Monstrous creatures generally ignore morale and could take a lot of punishment without degrading. Having their weaknesses being kiting (situational) and screening/tarpitting provides for interesting tactical options beyond just massed firepower/melee power. I think more options based in manouevre rather than overt killing are good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
Although apocalypse and tank war (how's it called again?) Supplement formation are fine I think. Used them a few time and all went well. Fairly limited in nature and had to pay for it though.

Spearhead. Looked cool, don't think I ever saw anyone play it.

Monsters need a Move characteristic, the 6" standard move was fine when the biggest thing around was a Carnifex but it became silly when you start including larger stuff. Which is also why everyone (except Tyranids) had special rules for their melee MC movement, IIRC DKs jumped and teleported.

Then again one of the issues of Old 40k is that it couldn't really handle the larger MCs that have been introduced since 5th ed. Gargantuan rules were too much but standard MC rules were too little.

Oh yeah, spearhead! well, we tried it a few times (maybe three) and it came out fun, nice little flavor and addition to your usual gaming. For added fun, I recommend using a somewhat bigger table than usual though to accomodate longer ranges when fighting tanks Vs tanks. Not so much if Tyranids and their MCs are involved.

 Rihgu wrote:

Rather than allow Rapid Fire to shoot twice at half range whether moving or not, I think a better iteration might have been to allow a unit that only fired one shot (whether it moved or not) to still charge. Assault would remain ideal for full firepower on the move, and Rapid Fire wouldn't allow piling out of a transport or deep strike and immediately double-firing, but flexible units like Tactical Marines would have the option to shoot (just one shot apiece) and then finish the job in melee.

Would this be any functionally different than using a bolt pistol before charging?
Or was giving tactical marines a bolt pistol a later invention?

edit: I guess it would matter for guardsmen, the other ubiquitous "I have a rapid fire gun" archetype.

Pistols came later.

And while I'm normally a fan of designing for effect rather than designing for simulation, the idea of units armed with assault rifles putting them away and drawing pistols as they perform an assault feels very wrong. Doubly so when that solution was rarely modeled; most people just agreed that Tacticals visibly carrying nothing but bolters actually had invisible bolt pistols as well.

It feels like a kludge, when the underlying problem was simply that weapons that in the fluff are frequently used while closing to contact couldn't be used in that manner on the table.

I mean, not like it really matters, just spitballing ideas here. But charging aside, I do think the change they ended up making in 4th- two shots at half range, whether you moved or not- was a first step towards alpha-strike-focused gameplay and would have significant consequences down the line.

 Hellebore wrote:

Uptonius wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.

3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.

That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.

But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.

As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.

Fair enough. My only curiosity is your take on "rich background". The Index Astartes articles fleshed out the Legions more than ever before. We got the Craftworld Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Witch Hunters, Demon Hunters, Deathwatch, we had PDFs for the epicast titans, FW was kicking out cool stuff, Speed Freeks [lol autocorreced to Greeks], Armageddon, The Hive Fleet invasion (technically 4th but that's really a continuation of 3.5), white dwarf was adding new units (Mounted Demonettes, Rail Rifles, Kroot Armies, Armored Company) and so much more.
I felt the lore and background was more open for the players to make their own.
At Dakka we had a guy with a Chaos army that was a hockey team (including Zambonis on his transports), and don't get me started on the Vehicle Design Rules.

I will say that the tournament/competitive scene does seem to have really amped up around then. But I think that was mostly because the game was fairly balanced if you didn't have endless collections of models.
I felt the community was far more open and accepting in those days. However... It was mostly guys 30+ years old with a few kids under 12. I think I could count the number of teens my age on one hand. Oh man... And the one single time my girlfriend walked in was a nightmare (to be fair she new of the crowd and dressed to impress).

We had ladder campaigns and the store battle ladders. We had a very competitive scene but 99% of our games were not cut throat gaming. Mostly friendly pick up games that contributed to us all getting more than one game in a week. I practically lived in their lounge, getting in as many games as possible from around 1998 up until they closed and became Battlefield: Manchester (no windows, no parking, across from the park with the most homeless).

If you entered 40k with 3rd, you would not have any information on those factions. the 2nd ed codexes were on average 90 pages long, and each unit got its own write up, along with general faction history and great snippets of lore in outboxes.

I'm not sure if they ever mentioned the 3 moons of the eldar homeworld after the one outbox in the 2nd ed codex for example.

And, when they started writing proper books again, they were all basically just trimmed down versions of the original material, often losing the turn of phrase and evocative nature in the process.

And every book since then has basically just been a reprint of those 2nd ed codexes, and imo, never quite as good.

Prior to 3rds launch I spent several months reading all the 2nd edition codex and a good deal of Space Wolf, Eldar, Tyranid and Ork models. Also Epic stuff.

I remember the Angels of Death book being pretty hollow. Just marines in different colors. Some drank blood and the others liked bathrobes.

Eldar? That codex was so ugly I could barely look at it. I also don't think elves have a place in Sci-Fi so maybe I'm biased.
Ugly models, and stupid themes so I don't even know if I actually read it in its entirety. I probably just threw it aside once I saw the Chaos codex.

It sounds like you forgot about the Craftworld Eldar codex. That was a vast improvement.

They brought back that stupid lore entry+unit entry crap for like 5th or 6th edition didn't they? The horrible versions where the rules for Eldar were chopped up and spread throughout the entire book?

In 7th edition aircraft felt way more fun to use and were more thematic. I remember when one of my vendettas hit a hive tyrant and caused it to crash to the ground, allowing one of my friends to charge it the same turn and finish it off with his sisters.

I also remember a game where the objectives for the mission were to secure skyfire auto cannons around the table. On turn three (or later i don't quite remember) i finally captured one of the guns and it allowed me to finally strike out at my opponents forgeworld fire raptor gunship. I lucked out and with a single shot and a failed roll on the pen table (it may have been a different table I don't remember) it crashed and plummeted to the ground. Truly a lucky hail mary of a shot that won me that game.

 catbarf wrote:
I do think the change they ended up making in 4th- two shots at half range, whether you moved or not- was a first step towards alpha-strike-focused gameplay and would have significant consequences down the line.

I think that move was decent. Being able to fire twice on the move meant that Marines could act a little more like the shock troops they're intended to be. It was also balanced a bit in 4th by the fact that, yeah you could fire twice coming out of a transport, but the transport rules were incredibly punishing to the occupants if destroyed. A bit of a risk reward thing there. The real problem definitely came later when special-weapon-spam became a thing, and transports were far less punishing.

At least Eldar got the Avenger Shuriken Catapult in response later, but the standard Cat started looking worse in comparison.

Whilst I pretty much universally love the flyer models, I think they were overall a mistake.

GW has of course tried a few ways to implement flyers in 40K scale rules wise, but none have really satisfied. The scope of the battle is just too small for such units to make sense.

Stuff like the Valkyrie just about work, as in role they’re kind of hybrid jet/helicopter strike units with transport capability. But even then, they just don’t really feel right to me.

But dedicated bombers and fighters? 40K just isn’t the right scale for them, at all. Even the earlier Forgeworld rules reduced your expensive kit to little more than a fancy marker.

If memory serves, you chose your entry point and exit point, and at an unusual point in the turn, the model moved in an imaginary straight line between the two points, and could attack enemy units within a set range of that line. Now as an abstract, that kind of works as it fairly accurately represent a fighter or bomber moving at high speed streaking over the battlefield, giving something a kicking.

But…as I said? You really didn’t need the model for it. Not really. As (correct me if I’m wrong!) enemy ranges were measured to the line of travel, not the model itself.

And all the other iterations have been worse, turning flyers into skimmers of limited manoeuvres.

In summary? Models = pretty much universally gorgeous. Rules - you can’t make them work and make going to the bother of buying, assembling and painting a model make sense.

Flyers just do not fit into the game, rules-wise. One of those things that are either over-tuned or under-tuned. I considered getting the Stormtalon recently, but it's just not worth 60 dollars for the in-game hassle.

They don't work in Bolt Action, either.