Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

i think the truth of 2nd edition is somewhere between the rose-tinted look and the horror stories.
A lot of the horrors stories are exaggerated, or i some cases just plain wrong.
Likewise some of the better aspects are mis-remembered or stripped of their frustrating/broken aspects.

I've played a lot of 2nd edition and still do.
I find that most of the scarier combos are rarely worth points. Characters although lethal in CC spend most of the game out of it (assassins are the exception to this, the Eversor in particular is proper scary!)
Most games are settled by heavy weapons, (playing with tyranids are exception to this, their success tends to relate to how many genestealers make it in to CC)
how many, how accurate, how well deployed and maneuvered.

For me the great strength of 2nd edition is in the army lists. The flexibility allows you to create a large number of different armies from a single list, and very few lists were 'unbeatable' or 'useless'.

The big downside is that it was a very different game at the end of its life compared to the beginning. Many extreme options had been limited or removed ( i still have the WD where we were told to destroy Virus grenade and Virus outbreak cards)
Speeding up the game could have been achieved by removing most of the quirkier and underused aspects (eg tanglefoot grenades), removing some of the randomness (eg expanding/contracting/moving templates),
and tidying up HtH (experienced players with lots of different coloured dice could resolve it quite quickly, but it was a real drag for beginners)

A revised 2nd edition could have been done, but wouldn't have required the doubling of army size and therefore increased spending on models that 3rd did. (cynical hat on there!)

If anyone has questions about 2nd then fire away, i still have all rulebooks, codexes and most of the WDs from that version

I basically play games of "revised" 2nd edition, because they are friendly games where we have decided to ignore all the parts of the game that didn't add to the fun, like anything with Vortex or virus in the name (lol), and we simply don't use blind grenades.

I refuse to believe that 2nd edition was some giant abortion of a ruleset that everyone seems to like to claim that it was. You could probably come up with just as big a list of list of things about 6th edition that aren't fun in that edition, too.

You can refuse to believe it, but after experiencing sonic blasters, plague grenades, warp spiders, and cheap hormagaunts, you can keep your 2nd edition.

rowenstin wrote:


Hiding in transports was a really bad idea, as most of the hits on the hull meant the passengers were killed. No save, no roll of the die, straight up killed. I don't recall anybody using transports for more than one turn, The funny thing is, you could disembark from transports no matter how much it had moved, though doing so at high speeds caused a high Str hit. But if you had a character with a lot of wounds and a invulnerable save, you could ignore that and zoom in your rhino directly into the enemy's deployment zone (rhinos were fast those days)

Hits on a vehicle only killed passengers if the vehicle was destroyed. Of course, with the location-specific damage tables, vehicles had 99 ways to die in a turn (lets see... I hit your treads and rolled a 5... your Land Raider flips over onto its roof and lands D6" in a random direction... oh, directly on top of your Librarian!), so they did tend to explode more often than in later editions, but every transport that wasn't carrying Orks was immune to the basic infantry weapon, so Rhinos, Chimeras, and the rest wouldn't get popped by mass boltgun fire. As long as you kept them clear of heavy weapon sight lines (or put something on the table people wanted to shoot at more, like 3 Leman Russes) you could keep them around for a few turns.

Or you could employ decoy transports. Remember; transports were purchased from the vehicles allotment. There was no such thing as dedicated transports. You could buy three Rhinos and legally put a squad in only one of them. Typically, players in my area would announce that a squad was beginning play in a Rhino, then write down on a scrap of paper *which* Rhino had the squad in it. If that Rhino were destroyed or if the squad popped out of it, the player would show the paper to his opponent to prove the squad had been in that particular Rhino all along.

As for deploying from a transport that had moved and taking damage, this was used as a tactic in my area so often it got a little silly. Ten Beastmen in a Rhino, move it 12" at the enemy, jump out, take a S10 hit (its ok, I have 2 wounds on each model) then charge 8" into my opponent's face. It was glorious. Then the next opponent I played pulled the same stunt on me, but with Ogryns in a Chimera. They have more than 2 wounds... and guns that automatically hit when fired at targets closer than 12"... Then our local Squat player put an Ancestor Lord in Exo Armor with Conversion Field on a bike, drove him 18" at the enemy and had him jump off the bike. That led to a S10" hit, with a conversion field flash-blind RADIUS of 10"... I forget who he was fighting, but half his deployment zone couldn't see to shoot for the rest of the battle. Oh, the shenannigans we used to get up to in 2nd Ed.

Martel732 wrote:
You can refuse to believe it, but after experiencing sonic blasters, plague grenades, warp spiders, and cheap hormagaunts, you can keep your 2nd edition.

Warp Spiders! I still have an irrational fear of them to this day. They made me fear to send my Bloodthirster out into combat. Imagine a giant demon who in 2nd edition was a BOSS, looking around every corner and kneading his hands in nervous agitation as he looked for any signs of warp spiders.

I loved 2nd ed, but 6th is a better game.

That said, I would love a re-done 2nd edition with all the new 6th ed units and such as a side game.

I have never played 2nd edition, but from the comments I have read about it the system seems to be very good for casual games between friends...and not much else.

Although the vehicle hit location charts are something I would very much like to experience at least once in my life.

Martel732 wrote:
You can refuse to believe it, but after experiencing sonic blasters, plague grenades, warp spiders, and cheap hormagaunts, you can keep your 2nd edition.

Again, all problems with 2nd edition armies, not 2nd edition rules. Overall, I think 2nd edition rules were just a few tweaks away from being solid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I have never played 2nd edition, but from the comments I have read about it the system seems to be very good for casual games between friends...and not much else.

Although the vehicle hit location charts are something I would very much like to experience at least once in my life.

40k has never really been good for anything more than casual games between friends and still isn't. It's always required tweaks to actually be balanced. That was the case in 2nd edition and that's the case now.

I have never played 2nd edition, but from the comments I have read about it the system seems to be very good for casual games between friends...and not much else.

I very much agree. But then again, those were the days where that was what 40K was SUPPOSED to be played like. 40K used to be a laid-back casual affair.

Again, all problems with 2nd edition armies, not 2nd edition rules. Overall, I think 2nd edition rules were just a few tweaks away from being solid.

That could be true. I have limited experience with Chaos Marines in 2nd ed, and absolutely none with Tyranids. But 2nd edition had to be mechanically sound, or no one would like Necromunda (or to a limited group, Gorkamorka). Because shooting and close combat are the same, and every weapon in Necromunda has the exact same profile as that weapon has in 2nd edition. Sure, there are more weapons that are more powerful than those in Necromunda, but there are also many more ways to splatter that guy with such a powerful weapon.

The only mechanic of 2nd edition that is inescapable and cumbersome is close combat. I would not want to run a close combat army in 2nd, because the game could take hours longer than it should. But in small model count games where combats tend to be one-on-one or with very small groups, it works just fine.

Yeah, close combat is one of the "tweaks" I'd make to 2nd, lol. The 2nd ed system was fun as long as you had no more than, ohhh, say 40 models a side, anything more than that it got cumbersome.

i generally play 1500pts for 2nd.
That level keeps games manageable, and forces you to make difficult decisions when list building (especially with marines, where it was tough to get more than 20 marines in if you wanted any vehicles)
That was the point level for GW tournaments back then, and their tournaments normally had a load of restrictions too. A pointer that they knew the game needed work.

I played 2nd at my local GW store every Saturday for about two years. I think I must have been quite lucky after having read some descriptions of how beardy players could ruin the fun with gun-line armies, vortex grenades, uber characters and the like.

I still haven't had chance to play 6th yet so I cannot compare the two but when 3rd came out, it was a swifter game which certainly was fun to play, but it lost a lot of character I think.

Taking out several (at least two, maybe three) genestealers in HtH with a devastator was a moment I shall never forget, alongside another occasion when some chap crowed about how his Khorne Berseker army would cream my measily two combat squads army only for me to kill, in one hit on the first turn, his entire havoc squad with a well placed heavy plasma gun shot and then mowing down his berserkers as they slowly ran across the table.

Assault in 3rd seemed much too powerful to me with the focus on unit rather than individual combat. My first introductory game in 3rd was five marines versus ten dark eldar. The marines were reduced down to the sergeant in return for no kills, who then assaulted, killed one dark eldar and routed the whole unit, over running them and killing the lot; fun for me as the marine player but not so realistic I thought.

On the subject of terminators, they've always been a favourite of mine, but I remember a dreadful game with ten terminators plus terminator characters, during 3rd where they got butchered in two turns by an eldar player; hardly representative of what they are supposed to be capable of in the background. On the other hand, it was a truly amazing thing to witness Abaddon and a full terminator bodyguard get killed to only one model in a single turn due to some truly horrendous dice rolling back in 2nd.

2nd had some rules that could make gameplay slow and stodgy and though I didn't encounter it myself, I believe others when they talk about beardy cheesemongers creating stupid armies but it would seem that those people still exist. The real problem as I see it with all subsequent Editions is that Games Workshop realised that some people are willing to pay silly money just so they can stomp on anyone they might play against and will buy three of the big expensive uber units. They also realised that making a swifter game with compulsory unit choices also meant those (like myself probably who only fought with ten marines in 2nd with, eventually some terminators and dreadnoughts and a bike squadron, simply because I find tanks and bigger models too cumbersome to carry around for a game and so I had little interest in buying such things then and only have the intention to buy such models now simply for the fun of making them) would be forced to buy more models. I completely see the business sense in such a move but, for me, I would rather play a smaller, narrative oriented game (for which 2nd was fairly ideal) than a horde versus horde game which is how the newer Editions seem to me as somewhat of an outsider to the game now.

I know people moan about 'herohammer' but at least it had heroes, characters that you could create and have it actually mean something in the game (anyone remember the white dwarf article that allowed you to design your own Chapter Master?). From what I see now from other people discussing the game, it seems more about who can afford and be beardy enough to use three Riptides or three Heldrakes. That doesn't seem like much fun to me.

I suspect people's perceptions of 2nd are very much a product of the environment they played in.

Remember, the Internet wasn't as all pervasive as it is now, access was limited to using a PC, which was still a relatively expensive investment for a young person.

Consequently, if you played largely as I did (within a small group of friends in a vacuum, rarely owning more than one of any unit, often only at minimum size, we didn't write a list, whoever had travelled to the hosts house added up the points of what they brought, and them the host picked models to match that) then you're far more likely of having fond memories of it.

When I see people talking about some of the broken stuff now, it surprises me, because in my little bubble, it just passed us by.

I guess that might be how GW think the player base still operates!

 azreal13 wrote:
I suspect people's perceptions of 2nd are very much a product of the environment they played in.

Remember, the Internet wasn't as all pervasive as it is now, access was limited to using a PC, which was still a relatively expensive investment for a young person.

Consequently, if you played largely as I did (within a small group of friends in a vacuum, rarely owning more than one of any unit, often only at minimum size, we didn't write a list, whoever had travelled to the hosts house added up the points of what they brought, and them the host picked models to match that) then you're far more likely of having fond memories of it.

When I see people talking about some of the broken stuff now, it surprises me, because in my little bubble, it just passed us by.

I guess that might be how GW think the player base still operates!

That's pretty much my experience with 2nd. It's also how I still like to play, though when I go to stores, I have different expectations and I realize that the gaming culture has changed as well. Spamming something to win wasn't even a concept with us.

Spamming to win is virtually unheard in 2nd edition because of several factors:

1. Unit cost,
the higher cost of most units in 2nd compared to now means that in any normal battle size there just wasn't the points available to do it.

2.Effectiveness of units
Kind of links to 1. any unit worth spamming was too expensive, any unit cheap enough wasn't really worth it.

3. Army Structure
with most armies the 50% limit on support makes spamming difficult.
take space marines as an example
1500pt army
min 375 on squads
min 100 on captain
max 750 on vehicles
so in that 750 you could fit in 3 dreads, but spending all those points on 3 models means you would have a very small army perhaps 15 models total
against most opponents you would be swamped, making it very difficult to achieve your mission objective and therefore win.

take imperial guard as another example
IG come in platoons of cmd sqaud + 1-3 inf/heavy squads
now you can only have 1 vehicle for each squad you have (apart from chimeras which could be taken as transports for squads)
so again cost comes into it an inf sqaud is min 100pts, a chimera 145, and a LRBT 205
you could spam chimeras and maybe get 5/6 into a 1500pt army, but you would struggle against heavily armoured troops and vehicles (power armour/terminator armour/ av 15+)

In my experience a flexible varied list is the way to go in 2nd. Especially if you dont know what your opponent is taking or what mission you will get

The reality of 2nd is that you definitely had to have a group that was capable of seeing something as broken and unfun, and then deciding to never do that again because "it made for a dumb game". And that's been true ever since those days, it's just losing out in modern days to WAAC players.

Also, the guys that consistently made the game horrible (which I guess I am also in the small group that never experienced such a thing) in 2nd edition, if they are still around, are doing the same thing in 6th edition- just with different parts of the game.

It's more problem of the gamer rather than the game. I know right now I could play a game of 2nd edition with a Warboss with some fun gear, a couple squads of boyz, a herd of gretchin and either a min-strength bike squad or a dreadnought, and have a really fun game.

Or have a perfectly legal all-Terminator Ultramarines "1st Company" force. I know that was one of the coolest parts of the game, where certain armies weren't tied to certain codexes. I didn't have to have the Angels of Death codex if I wanted to play the Terminator-armored veterans of a generic chapter of my own.

Or you could write rules that people can't take advantage of.

GW can't do that, proven by over 25 years of 40K.

GW have had decent rules in other games, just not 40k.

Yeah, but after 20 years of playing varoious editions of 40K, Necromunda, Gorkamorka, Epic 40K, and Battlefleet Gothic, there are always instances where players cooperate to either ignore or house rule some part of the rules. People think lots of the codexes for 2nd were overpowered (and some obviously were), but then lots of people are currently hating Eldar and Tau in 6th edition, or the Necrons when they came out in Battlefleet Gothic.

IMO, 2nd ed 40k core rules were a few tweeks away from being a solid rule set.(As previously discussed.)
(6th edition needs a major overhaul to arrive at a half decent rule set.)

The codex books needed some serious pruning/balancing , but then thats the case with every edition of 40k.

40k 2nd ed was the last edition using WHFB skirmish rules for a skirmish rule set.And so was probably the best edition in terms of game mechanics and resolution methods delivering the intended game play.

Using WHFB skirmish rules for a modern battle game , is just not that effective , in terms of clarity and brevity.(You have to add loads of additional rules to cover the game play.)

True. The 2nd edition mechanics were part of the fun of Necromunda, which being a completely different type of game allows an overview of the basic mechanics of 2nd edition without the possible beardy-ness of the 40K codexes coloring anything for the outside viewer. If Necromunda would have been done with the mechanics of 3rd edition-onwards, (I think) it would likely have been a great deal less fun to play for what it was supposed to deliver.