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 Kain wrote:

 MrFlutterPie wrote:
Actually Necrons had 5 units.

The point is that they did exist in 2ed regardless of how many units they had and the fact their codex was in WD.

I feel 2ed could have been salvaged instead of what we got in 3rd. I would have removed the psychic phase, greatly simplified close combat, added a FOC to cut down on herohammer. I would have also dropped the Dark Millennium supplement as had the rules added into the main rule book.

And how much of a Necron collection would you have had to shelve?:

Oh and don't forget the Tau players who will all be left out in the cold completely.

Dude, what are you getting at?

Why would I have to "shelve" anything? If we're thinking about using 2nd Ed rules than I'd have to shelve the models that weren't available at the time.

Just like EVERY OTHER ARMY in the game.

Edit: To clarify the Necrons...

Lord, Immortal, Warrior, Jet Bike and Scarabs. That's 5 bro. Did you even play second ed?

 DeffDred wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 MrFlutterPie wrote:
Actually Necrons had 5 units.

The point is that they did exist in 2ed regardless of how many units they had and the fact their codex was in WD.

I feel 2ed could have been salvaged instead of what we got in 3rd. I would have removed the psychic phase, greatly simplified close combat, added a FOC to cut down on herohammer. I would have also dropped the Dark Millennium supplement as had the rules added into the main rule book.

And how much of a Necron collection would you have had to shelve?:

Oh and don't forget the Tau players who will all be left out in the cold completely.

Dude, what are you getting at?

Why would I have to "shelve" anything? If we're thinking about using 2nd Ed rules than I'd have to shelve the models that weren't available at the time.

Just like EVERY OTHER ARMY in the game.

Edit: To clarify the Necrons...

Lord, Immortal, Warrior, Jet Bike and Scarabs. That's 5 bro. Did you even play second ed?

I'm saying that as the Necrons and Tau are the newest armies, they'd have to shelve nearly everything, while a Marine or Tyranid player would be relatively fine.

And yes, I did, I in fact started with 2e Tyranids before I hit my teens, and I would have laughed at anyone who seriously suggested playing the Necrons for anything but campaign games.

Actually I did laugh at them and told them to put away their Necron models and bring out a real army. It was majorly uncool of me and probably got me more than a few deserved stompings when the 3e Necron book hit the ground.

We still play 2nd ed. at our club. Most of the codexes can be got for a couple of pounds on ebay, and all the wargear cards can be found online. I have created a lot of the newer units myself for models that have come out since 2nd's demise, just finished the Valkyrie in fact.
I think 2nd ed. is a lot of fun, and very good at representing small skirmishes. A lot of people hate it though, just like a lot of people hate 6th. Just the way it is!

I agree with obithius .
2nd ed was a fun skirmish game with lots of detail and character.(And over complication and imbalance.)
It could have been cleaned up and made into a better skirmish game.
OR if GW wanted a good battle game , they should have used another rule set to get there.(NOT WHFB!)

6th ed is an awful rule set in relation to clarity brevity and elegance.
It uses multiple resolutions for most interaction , causing needless complication and conflict of interest.
I like the game play 40k has, I like the back ground of the 40k .
Its just the instructions to play the game have always been poor.And IMO have not improved much over the last 15 years at all.
(Compared to the other rule sets currently available.)

 Kain wrote:
I'm saying that as the Necrons and Tau are the newest armies, they'd have to shelve nearly everything, while a Marine or Tyranid player would be relatively fine.

Marines or Tyranids would actually lose quite a lot of their units.

For Marines, just off the top of my head, you lose Scout Bikers, Landspeeder Storm and Typhoon, Storm Ravens, Storm Talons, the Land Raider variants, Razorbacks with anything other than Las/Plas, Command Squads, Thunderfire Cannons, Venerable and Irondclad Dreadnoughts, Drop Pods and Vanguard Vets.

Tyranids lose their big beasties, all of their flying stuff aside from Gargoyles, Pyrovores, Tyrant Guard, Hive Guard, Venomthropes, Broodlords, Raveners, Old One Eye and the Red Terror.


Yes, Necrons lose a bit, and Tau would have to just be proxied as something else. But Marines and Nids have been around longer and have a bigger pool of units that have been added in that time. They did still have playable codexes... just not with anywhere near as much stuff in them.

...and I would have laughed at anyone who seriously suggested playing the Necrons for anything but campaign games.

Really? I played Necrons in 2nd ed. They kicked serious butt.

 insaniak wrote:

 Kain wrote:
I'm saying that as the Necrons and Tau are the newest armies, they'd have to shelve nearly everything, while a Marine or Tyranid player would be relatively fine.

Marines or Tyranids would actually lose quite a lot of their units.

For Marines, just off the top of my head, you lose Scout Bikers, Landspeeder Storm and Typhoon, Storm Ravens, Storm Talons, the Land Raider variants, Razorbacks with anything other than Las/Plas, Command Squads, Thunderfire Cannons, Venerable and Irondclad Dreadnoughts, Drop Pods and Vanguard Vets.

Tyranids lose their big beasties, all of their flying stuff aside from Gargoyles, Pyrovores, Tyrant Guard, Hive Guard, Venomthropes, Broodlords, Raveners, Old One Eye and the Red Terror.


Yes, Necrons lose a bit, and Tau would have to just be proxied as something else. But Marines and Nids have been around longer and have a bigger pool of units that have been added in that time. They did still have playable codexes... just not with anywhere near as much stuff in them.

...and I would have laughed at anyone who seriously suggested playing the Necrons for anything but campaign games.

Really? I played Necrons in 2nd ed. They kicked serious butt.

Conceded on account of you not being DeffDread (Note, not being serious here)

No but seriously, point for you.

I do think that 2e could do with a lot of homebrew for the units and in the Tau's case, entire army that came in afterwards.

And to add onto it; Burn the Virus outbreak card.

 Kain wrote:

And to add onto it; Burn the Virus outbreak card.

That should have been done back in the '90s anyway... It was FAQd out of existence about halfway through 2nd ed's run.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:
2nd edition was a bad game. It was objectively worse than the current game in nearly every possible way.

That's a very quaint and adorable opinion.

However, for people looking to play a more tactical game, with moves and counter-moves 2nd Edition remains quite playable.

The modern game is just a dice rolling exercise, comparatively. It's a tabletop game for people not very good at tabletop games, or for people with a short attention span.

3rd+ Edition:
Set up models.
Move models toward eachother (or not at all, if you have a gunline army).
Roll lots and lots of dice.
Remove models.


That's it.

How exactly was 2nd edition any different from your opinion of 3+ edition? .

To me, the idea that 2nd edition was more "tactical" is a delusion brought on by the fogs of time. Every game devolved down to who had the most heavy weapons and killer characters. Troops were a non-factor in every dimension.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
. Every game devolved down to who had the most heavy weapons and killer characters. Troops were a non-factor in every dimension.

Unless you were using Guard, in which case the key was in maxing out on troops and just sitting your entire army at the back of the board in overwatch for the entire game. Woo yay!

 insaniak wrote:

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
. Every game devolved down to who had the most heavy weapons and killer characters. Troops were a non-factor in every dimension.

Unless you were using Guard, in which case the key was in maxing out on troops and just sitting your entire army at the back of the board in overwatch for the entire game. Woo yay!

I remember the Earthshaker rounds being hilariously overpowered. Like even if it somehow didn't penetrate a vehicle despite it's ridiculous number of dice for the job, it still rolled on the damage tables because feth you.

 insaniak wrote:
Unless you were using Guard, in which case the key was in maxing out on troops and just sitting your entire army at the back of the board in overwatch for the entire game. Woo yay!

That was less a problem with Guard and more a problem with Overwatch.

2nd Ed was a game that only worked on a small scale, which is why Necromunda was so good, yet even in Necromunda Overwatch was a problem.

Although at least in Necromunda there was more chance of being able to get your models around behind the character in Overwatch.

I agree that 2nd ed Necromundia works great for skirmish games with a decent amount of LOS blocking terrain.

But is absolutely crap for larger games when compared to other rule systems.
(We have 3rd to 6th edition 40k to prove this... )

Sorry, I can't really understand most of the problems people charge 2nd ed. with. Maybe we're playing it wrong or something!
The herohammer thing never seems to work, expensive characters rarely make their points in our games. A character can attack one, maybe two, models on the turn it charges. Then it gets a 2" follow up to attack one more next turn, with no necessity for the squad being attacked to move up. If you want to tie the hero up for the whole game, just let it kill a model per turn!
Overwatch always seems to be a waste. It can deny a specific area to the enemy, as it should. But there's a 90 degree fire arc and a -1 to hit, plus you should be playing with plenty of terrain.
There is a lot of new stuff that needs to be reverse engineered, but Dark Millennium has a weapon points list for designing new vehicles, and there are necron, tau and dark eldar lists floating about.
I find the game produces more memorable moments. I watched a game a little while ago between Chaos and Eldar. Chaos has a rule that an enemy model teleporting has a chance of being possessed. Watching Warp Spiders turn into Daemonettes when they re-appeared was great fun, and happened at exactly the wrong time!

 obithius wrote:
Chaos has a rule that an enemy model teleporting has a chance of being possessed. Watching Warp Spiders turn into Daemonettes when they re-appeared was great fun, and happened at exactly the wrong time!

This was the single most enjoyable moment of all my games in 2nd Ed. The unit of spiders staring at the cutty cutty daemon standing there was always hilarious!

I also used to blow away Tyranids with my Noisemarines until they got close and then just possess them all with Daemonettes and cut up the bugs something fierce...

I enjoy the hell out of Necromunda, but I can't imagine playing a game with more than a dozen models per side with those rules, at least not as my "go to" regular game.

I enjoy the hell out of 6th edition, and I like that 2nd ed silliness is being brought in here and there. I wouldn't mind a few more crazy rules combined with the generally more streamlined ruleset.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

3rd+ Edition:
Set up models.
Move models toward eachother (or not at all, if you have a gunline army).
Roll lots and lots of dice.
Remove models.

And 2nd edition was:
Set up models.
Roll even more dice, but also consult a hundred charts.
Remove models.

Movement wasn't a thing 2nd edition enjoyed.

Second edition was very much geared toward a more squad based combat game due to all the extra abilities added to the models. It has been funny to see from one codex to the next some of the old rules getting dusted off.

2nd edition anything was great for how powerful they could be like "D&D" vs. "AD&D".

I think it is worthy to collect what you can for the original concept for those armies.