Jervis is served!

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**Jinxman**

Grot 6 wrote:

OK. I never thought I'd be the one, but you're a little off base with some of your post.

Jervis isn't the one to blame for 3d edition.

It was a concert job by the whole team of developers, culminating in the same sort of game creep that we all now know and love, like an ugly child. Take off the rose colored glasses for a little while, and go back and remember WHY they changed it.

2nd edition's collective issue was that games revolved around your special FOTM character, from either everyones favorite Eldar Exarch Lords, to the goofy looking happy orks, to the IG's special bit of fun, Commisar Yarrick. Not to mention any of the countless SPAZZ MARRINES RUULE!!! special characters with thier one hit wonder weapons of doom, cleaving through at least half your army, before a bad roll killed them off.
If you were smart enough to geald the special characters , IE only use them in 2000 pt games and above, then they weren't that big a deal, because people would THEN overload thier vehicles with ridiculous amounts of special options, fill out thier las-plas tac squads with plasmagrenades, combi weapons, and vortex grenades for the veteran sgts, and the ever popular masses of scrapped together models that fell apart, halfway throught he game, just because you looked at them wrong.

A turn took almost an hour, if it was shorter, it was because you were running one of a myrid of smaller number, higher point value options that you used to be able to run around the table with. The reasoning behind 3d edition was as basic as the growth, ( and popularity of) GW itself. They wanted more models on the board, the only way that would happen is if you cut the point cost, chopped down the time a turn took, and MADE players have to go out and BUY more models.

This was GW's Golden era, if you will. To illustrate my point, I'm going to reference WD 226. GW had more in thier pocket then just little old 40k, and fantasy running around. Oh, whats that... a couple of skermish games...Chaos Gate, Gorkamorka, Plastic castle, forts and card scenery boxes , plastic trees, The Citadal Journal,Regiments of Renown, etc, etc, etc. There was pretty much Liquid assets to do things with. The plastic scenery, the regimental, and the battleforce boxes, etc. ALL had a hand in pushing the game over the edge. As with all things new and shiney, the " Improvements" were part of a campaign to simplify the rules and bring 40K into a company level game.
OF COURSE, we can pee and moan about the details, but the idea was to play a bigger game of 40K with more models, and streamlined rules, because of the little issue of fighting DIY vehicles, that were at this point of fact UNSTOPPABLE.

As for Epic being a debacle, I beg to differ. Epic was just OK, but as with all of the other SPECIALIST GAMES, it was a red headed stepchild as compaired to 40K and Warhammer Fantasy. Jervis was at the time slowly giving the riegns to the so called Young Turks that were beginning to exert more and more of thier own overly inflated egos, then over things that the " Big three, holy trinity" developers were taking care of up to at that point.

When you start bringing in more then a fair share of enthusiasm, and less clear headed thinking with an overall plan, this is now what we are left to pick up the pieces of, because of the guys like the likes of Gav Thorp, Adrian Wood, etc. and that is where lies the problem.
In the transition, the little issue of Continuality was lost, and regular players were left with the just pumped the cat look on thier face, while as the 3d edition developed into the eventual codex creep, lack of filler that it eventually became.

My beef with Jervis is a little more developed then yours, in that his changes at times have a little less then steller effect on the game as a whole, so I can appreciate bonified Jervis bashing when it is warrented, but as to the reasoning behind 3d edition, take a step back, go back and re-remember WHY the changes were warrented, the bad decision to scrap whole sections of thought out material, removing alot of reasons behind some of the changes from the 2d to 3d edition, and THEN go back and look at a little boxed set titled Dark Millinium, and the abortion that it became for the game.

The new game, ( If it really is going to be that new) will probibly be a cautious attempt to win back a fanbase. I have purposely stayed out of any speculation, and leaving it up to GW to deliver either a good semblence of a redemption, or thier Death bell toll...

The blame isn't just on Jervis, but he is an easy lamb to slaughter. Just make sure you get the right sacrifice next time, is all I'm saying.

Well, I guess this was the weighty post I was waiting for. All apologies for implicating Jervis as the scourge who ruined "my" 40k. But the fact is my memory locates him at the forefront of the effort for whatever reason. I suppose that made him a convenient target when perhaps the vitriol should have been distributed fairly to those working behind the curtain. But his was also the voice that sounded across the "boards" of the day when 3rd went live asking for open-mindedness and forbearance. I imagine he must have thought that gamers were subject to knee-jerk reactions and snap judgments. Imagine... Upon reflection, perhaps he was speaking more as selfless integrator rather than self-serving spin artist. Maybe both. Who knows... As I said in the original post, I like Jervis. I've met him a couple of times and he's the sort of bloke one wouldn't mind driving across country with. I'll leave the particular country and it's respective dimensions up to you.

As you've said, 3rd was a transitional effort to birth one of the flagship games to the "company" level. That is the sort of corporate decision that unfortunately does impact the core community - sometimes favorably, sometimes not. GW seems to have managed it pretty well overall. Much better than Rackham - the poor bastards. Rose colored glasses? Got them right here. I cut my teeth on 2nd and like anyone who gets consumed by one of these infernal games, the "home team" usually becomes whatever is the version of the day. A purely subjective measurement but a measurement nonetheless: I had a lot more fun playing 2nd than 3rd. For all time, energy and enthusiasm that I sewed into 2nd, I reaped hours and hours of fun and good times. This all but evaporated within the confines of 3rd. Same gaming group and culture too. And believe me when I say I really did try to like the game. Same with 4th. The magic of 2nd wasn't there for me. Blessed are those who found it. And of course 2nd wasn't perfect. It had some really, really big pimples. But the formula, for all it's flaws, yielded "fun" for me. Maybe 5th will resonate somehow. Here's holding out hope. Thanks for sharing in my little rant/catharsis.

**Toreador**

And really, to have all the cool models and tanks in the game, you had to move it to that level. Players were the ones doing the pushing. We never played anything small, and usually had everything we could pack into a 4'x8' running around, sometimes we had so many points we stuck two tables together. We loved having masses of troops and vehicles running around, but we also did these games in a good 24 hours staying up till the wee hours to try and finish it. Few played small points, so of course the game moved that direction. Not like they didn't want it also.

**sebster**

Jinxman wrote:As you've said, 3rd was a transitional effort to birth one of the flagship games to the "company" level. That is the sort of corporate decision that unfortunately does impact the core community - sometimes favorably, sometimes not. GW seems to have managed it pretty well overall. Much better than Rackham - the poor bastards. Rose colored glasses? Got them right here. I cut my teeth on 2nd and like anyone who gets consumed by one of these infernal games, the "home team" usually becomes whatever is the version of the day. A purely subjective measurement but a measurement nonetheless: I had a lot more fun playing 2nd than 3rd. For all time, energy and enthusiasm that I sewed into 2nd, I reaped hours and hours of fun and good times. This all but evaporated within the confines of 3rd. Same gaming group and culture too. And believe me when I say I really did try to like the game. Same with 4th. The magic of 2nd wasn't there for me. Blessed are those who found it. And of course 2nd wasn't perfect. It had some really, really big pimples. But the formula, for all it's flaws, yielded "fun" for me. Maybe 5th will resonate somehow. Here's holding out hope. Thanks for sharing in my little rant/catharsis.

Ultimately, just because you like something more doesn't mean it's better. By all meas talk about all the cool stuff you used to be able to do. Just reading in this thread about setting people on fire brought me a nostalgic twinge.

But it doesn't mean the old game was better. It was an unsustainable mess. It had to change to allow decent sized games to finish before 2 in the morning, to stop the constant references to the rulebooks, to make basic troops worth taking.

**Tetchy**

2nd ed became a complete train wreck.

3rd edition to that extent was an improvement. Trouble was GW (or their fans) weren't radical enough and what started out with promise collapsed again under the weight of add-ons.

Unecessary verbeage (unless its simply fluff) is not good in a game as it ultimately puts off any but the most ardent of fans. The more effort required to understand a game, the fewer can be bothered to make an effort. And yes I am aware that many fans of GW games are the opposite of this in that they positively enjoy the complicatification of the game.

2nd ed was only fun because there was nothing to compare it to. It was better than what went before, but while there are some things that were good, the whole package got so far beyond its sell-by date it grew fungus!

I guess GW's "holy grail" is to try and keep the "fun" and stuff that people hark back to in 2nd edition (such as the "Shokk Atakk Gun" which I gather has made a comeback in the latest Ork Codex), while at the same time streamlining gameplay so it is up to modern standards and expectations and bears comparison to newer gaming systems that feel more "elegant". Trying to do this without cheesing off the fans who like looking up any given action in three books and cross referencing seven tables and chucking 50 dice 6 times to determine a result (exaggeration for comic effect...) of course is a neat trick if you can pull it off!