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.

Deadshot wrote:This is a terrible rule that means your important guy simply gets sniped and makes the unit useless.

As I said: I'm fine with this.

You don't want your dude to get sniped? Move your dudes better.

Oh, your squad has a missile launcher? I'll plonk these deepstrikers down and kill him so the unit will never do anything.

You say this like it's a bad thing. I'm not entirely sure why.

That's part of "strategy," DS.

The alternative is:

I plonk these deepstrikers down here. Fire these high strength, low AP weapons, but they conveniently don't hit the missile launcher guy. Which means that I've wasted that deepstrike and their weapons.

You don't like losing guys to deepstrike? Deploy your dudes better.

PLus those unique models are always the favourites, most unique and best painted. Especially when it means your HQ has to tank everything because the chumps in front of him were cut down and he goes down like a bitch to bolter fire instead of being the disgustingly tough to kill SOB he's supposed to be. I enjoy cinematics but the guys in front aren't always the first to die. Bullets can miss and hit guys behind, and its always always always the hero let standing at the end when his comrades are dead behind him.

You want someone to die? Hit them with more stuff. It means those heroic deathstar units just vanish and we have chump troops everywhere, unless those Deathstars aren't deathstars but in fact F22s that hit fast and hard enough they don't need to worry about anything.

I'm fine with all of this. It's precisely this mentality of "let's build these unkillable deathstars" that I think the "from the front" wound allocation system seriously hurt (but didn't go far enough in damaging) and which I'd very much like to see gotten rid of.

You remember that time when Robert E. Lee and a small squad of confederate soldiers moved straight up the middle of the battlefield? When Robert E. Lee just tanked cannonball fire left and right, just smacking them away like volley balls? And then they got to the enemy lines and single handedly cut down an entire platoon?

Yeah. Me neither. That never happened.

 Traditio wrote:

Deadshot wrote:This is a terrible rule that means your important guy simply gets sniped and makes the unit useless.

As I said: I'm fine with this.

You don't want your dude to get sniped? Move your dudes better.

Oh, your squad has a missile launcher? I'll plonk these deepstrikers down and kill him so the unit will never do anything.

You say this like it's a bad thing. I'm not entirely sure why.

That's part of "strategy," DS.

The alternative is:

I plonk these deepstrikers down here. Fire these high strength, low AP weapons, but they conveniently don't hit the missile launcher guy. Which means that I've wasted that deepstrike and their weapons.

You don't like losing guys to deepstrike? Deploy your dudes better.

PLus those unique models are always the favourites, most unique and best painted. Especially when it means your HQ has to tank everything because the chumps in front of him were cut down and he goes down like a bitch to bolter fire instead of being the disgustingly tough to kill SOB he's supposed to be. I enjoy cinematics but the guys in front aren't always the first to die. Bullets can miss and hit guys behind, and its always always always the hero let standing at the end when his comrades are dead behind him.

You want someone to die? Hit them with more stuff. It means those heroic deathstar units just vanish and we have chump troops everywhere, unless those Deathstars aren't deathstars but in fact F22s that hit fast and hard enough they don't need to worry about anything.

I'm fine with all of this. It's precisely this mentality of "let's build these unkillable deathstars" that I think the "from the front" wound allocation system seriously hurt (but didn't go far enough in damaging) and which I'd very much like to see gotten rid of.

You remember that time when Robert E. Lee and a small squad of confederate soldiers moved straight up the middle of the battlefield? When Robert E. Lee just tanked cannonball fire left and right, just smacking them away like volley balls? And then they got to the enemy lines and single handedly cut down an entire platoon?

Yeah. Me neither. That never happened.

Except its not puny human sitting back. Its CAPTAIN AWESOME OF THE AWESOME MARINES that you've spent x hours painting to watch him cinematically duel LORD WADER OF THE EVIL MARINES to the death in glorious combat only to watch some chump vaporise him with a lucky 6. 40k is a sci-fi universe that exaggerates things and puts focus on the heroes, so not letting them be heros and do their job as heroes is bad. For example, Paladinstars. Paladins are bodyguards to the Grand Master and shield him with their own bodies to the death. So they should be able to form up as this squad of heroes that wades through fire and draws the entire army just to kill him because that's their intention. 6th is more realistic to modern day warfare but this isn't modern warfare, this is the glorious silliness of the far future. Next you'll tell me Luke Skywalker shouldn't have been flying Snowspeeders into the enemy's teeth or that Aragorn should be sending his armies in to fight while he sits back and watches.

 Traditio wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
5th Edition was the best. The rules were straightforward enough that there was no confusion and didn't have the bogus rules that came in later like taking casualties from the front.

Don't care what people say about this one. I like this rule.

It prevents shenanigans, makes things more predictable for the person who's firing the weapon and actually makes the movement phase more important.

It gave just new shenigans. Specifically near invulnerable guy at the front soaking up all the shots that could hurt normal guys and magically dodging every shot that might threaten him.

Shenigan is a shenigan. Even if type of shenigan changed.

tneva82 wrote:It gave just new shenigans. Specifically near invulnerable guy at the front soaking up all the shots that could hurt normal guys and magically dodging every shot that might threaten him.

Shenigan is a shenigan. Even if type of shenigan changed.

You can at least avoid these shenanigans, though, if you maneuver properly. "The near invulnerable dude is at the front? Cool. I'll move this rhino past that squad and deploy my dudes at the rear of the squad. Do those non-character terminators get look out sir rolls? They don't? Oh...that's too bad. These shots are AP 2, just so you know."

I mean, don't get me wrong. 6th and 7th didn't kill deathstars.

But it did make shenanigans more predictable and avoidable.

Here's hoping that 8th finally puts the last nails in the coffin for death stars (likely won't happen, but a man can dream).

 Traditio wrote:
You remember that time when Robert E. Lee and a small squad of confederate soldiers moved straight up the middle of the battlefield? When Robert E. Lee just tanked cannonball fire left and right, just smacking them away like volley balls? And then they got to the enemy lines and single handedly cut down an entire platoon?

Yeah. Me neither. That never happened.

Yet that's how 40k is right now. Deathstars. With tankers at the front soaking up cannonballs.

 Brother SRM wrote:
I loved 6th. You got the hardback codices with the lavish production and great art

The problem was that this came at a dramatically increased price and weight (no more carrying a backpack with every codex) with most of the art just being photoshop colorized B&W art.

Introduction of hull points, meaning vehicles won't get stunlocked for 6 turns anymore

Lets not forget that this made them so easy to kill that vehicle heavy armies, particularly non skimmer vehicle armies, became practically nonexistent. Tracked tanks and walkers have never recovered from this change and largely continue to show very poorly into 7th (except when theyre free like in a Gladius... )

Multiple power weapon types with drawbacks and benefits for each

in a game where such a miniscule detail really has very little purpose or benefit at the scale it is played, with only 1 or 2 options ever really used if there's a choice

 Traditio wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:hrm, between Look Out Sir and "take from the front", there's more shennanigans possible than ever.

Like what?

Have you played against something like a TWC deathstar? The wound allocation gimmicks possible with units like that far exceed anything possible in previous editions.

More to the point, for a game fundamentally built around units, not individual models, and played at a platoon or company (or in some cases almost *battalion*) scale, this level of micromanagement and "tactical" finagling of individually equiped infantry is completely inappropriate and out of place.

In a skirmish game built around individual model actions, it could work and make sense. But 40k is very much not that.

Ultimately, as I said, I don't really care.

For me, it's a matter of what cuts out shenanigans and prevents power gaming. Even if it's inappropriate for the scale of the game, if it "sticks it to the power gamers," I'm cool with it.

except that it does nothing of the sort, in fact it does just the opposite, it dramatically enhances the functionality of powergamey builds like deathstars. It's fundamentally bad game design that curbs very little, dramatically increases time spent on gimmickery, and further enhances powergaming potential.

2nd Edition...with a handful of caveats.

THE GOOD:

+A game developed by geeky gamers. The geeks ran the show and the company was struggling and in financial shambles...and it was awesome.

+Wonderful codices. Arguably the best to date. Even modern players should buy the 2nd edition codex if you want some fantastic imagery, modeling examples, great fluff, and some pretty damn good writing. You also got way more bang for your buck than modern codices.

+Super gigantic vehicles/creatures were available...but only as special pieces and they rarely showed up. If you did, it was for a big event, and it was something special. The tabletop was dangerous but not the infantry-crushing quagmire it's become in later editions.

+Orks were properly hilarious. The fluff was rich, the weapons were wonky, clans actually mattered and you could human-shield your characters with gretchin...on purpose.

+The model line was generally quite good. For a while I thought multi-part plastics were the way of the future, but there is something very simple/attractive to nicely sculpted one-piece metals and I vastly prefer preparing/painting them.

+Vehicles were tough...until they weren't. Because of the vast range of armour, things like Bikes and Land Raiders were HUGELY different (not six points different) and many weapons had vastly different armour penetration rolls. The scope in armour penetration rolls was extreme...meaning every attack was a chance at destroying a vehicle, but nowhere near as guaranteed as it is now.

+Armour damage tables were unique for vehicles and this was pretty damn fun, particularly with the orks. Datafaxes were a pretty cool way to do vehicles - simple cards with everything you needed in one place. You only needed a couple for your army and you were good to go.

+Movement values. This was a stupid thing to remove. It allowed you to simply have faster units and slower units without having to compound everything with special rules to modify a generic movement value.

+Weapon ranges were greater, so the fact that many things moved a bit slower didn't impact the game nearly as much.

+Because of the reduced number of armies and forces you had some things in the game which were categorically better in certain aspects of the game. Genestealers? You simply ran away from them because they were nearly impossible to defeat in close combat.

+Psykers had some really cool/clever spells...though the psyker phase was terrible (see below).

+The atmosphere during 2nd was pre-tournament craze. While we had campaigns and some campaigns were going on, there wasn't much meta. Sure people power-gamed and cheesed out ridiculous army lists...but armies weren't ever seen as "obsolete" etc.

+All the armies played quite differently. The lack of generalized rules for many units meant that each army had a very unique flavor. Imperial Guard had the tanks...the best tanks, and lots of them. There wasn't a need for every army to have matching abilities (ie. we all need heavy tanks...we all need heavy walkers). Many armies simply didn't have certain types of equipment and it was fine.

+Because Games Workshop wasn't an all-conquering business at the time White Dwarf was superb. Genuine hobby articles aimed at gamers and geeks alike. Good stories, good battle reports, actual articles showing how to kitbash vehicles/kits that GW didn't produce (ie. "Here's how to make a Land Raider out of a WW1 tank since the kit is no longer available) etc. It wasn't blasphemy...it was hobby/gaming.

+Actually being able to hide in cover...to the point that people had to ferret you out or they could only shoot template weapons at you (ie. "I think I saw something...fire some frag missiles into those woods!")

+People normally collected armies and not lists. You like Imperial Guard? You bought a bunch of Imperial Guard models, often building up a large army. You actually (gasp!) played a different list for almost every game. No one built to a list, or had numerous tournament forces they'd abandon as new codices came out. Players were far more prone to sticking with a single army...constantly increasing in size, than jumping from army to army etc.

THE BAD:

-Psyker phase. Poorly handled, while neat. Took an age if you had a lot of psykers on the board.

-Hand to hand combat was extremely lengthy and handled in single combats etc. While it was neat to see an Eversor Assassin fight an Eldar Avatar in close-combat for five full turns...overall it was a huge quagmire which slowed the game immensely.

-Lingering effects. Inspired by the Rogue Trader days, many of the rules in 2nd edition were aimed at smaller games...and when you started filling up the table with models you had to eliminate or ignore some of these. You could have a lot of units on fire, running around mad from sickness, results of spells etc. It became a lot of book keeping.

-Power cheese gaming. Still around and very susceptible depending on who you were playing. I had a friend who insisted on a Chaos Champion riding around on a Steed of Slaanesh with a power field, power fist, plasma pistol, vortex grenade and some blessings...making him impossible to kill and supremely good at killing damn near anything in the game. It was still possible and happened...much like the vaunted 30+ Wolf Guard Terminators who could carry something like 15 assault cannons. If you wanted cheese..it could happen. As models were expensive and there wasn't a huge proliferation of these kinds of things - but it existed.

-Allies...as a support option you could take allies and sometimes this could exacerbate cheese. You have your cheesy Wolf Guard with Assault Cannons super squad...backed up by Leman Russ tanks...aaaaack!

-Vortex grenades. Dangerous precedent to put into a game...particularly if you brought an armorcast Gargant to the game.

-Stuff was expensive. Simply put, all metal models for most things meant you had no cheap starter-box goodies outside of basic space marines. Without the internet, you had to find a local hobby store which sold the stuff. Rarely at discount, so armies could get expensive. No cheap ebay options at the time.

-As things scaled up some of the more skirmish-esque rules could take time - such as every jump pack scattering etc. There were some rules you needed to polish or remove to get a big 3000+ point game going.

-Time. If you want a 1.5 hour quick bash...tough. 40K was very much an "afternoon event". I personally don't mind this at all but I see people constantly complaining about a game taking more than hour or hour and a half. This was a full afternoon hobby.

______________

As a whole the game was more fun to me. It took a real beating when 3rd edition came out. It went from Chess to Checkers almost overnight and the unique fluff and feel of the armies was almost eviscerated. It sounds like they've tried to stuff that back into play over the next four editions by cramming more and more special rules into it...but for me 2nd is still my choice.

Now, having said that...my buddies and I are working on stream-lining the few bad portions of 2nd and it's working out quite well. We've simplified the psyker phase and we're experimenting with alternate types of unit activations. We simply don't use some of the super fiddly wargear which leads to too much book-keeping etc.

 Elbows wrote:
Now, having said that...my buddies and I are working on stream-lining the few bad portions of 2nd and it's working out quite well. We've simplified the psyker phase and we're experimenting with alternate types of unit activations. We simply don't use some of the super fiddly wargear which leads to too much book-keeping etc.

Yeah some tweaking is benefiticial but less than newer editions. We tweaked CC already, got rid of tons of persistent effects and now are looking at should something to be done for transports that are quite a deathtrap. We don't dare to use rhinos at least in transport role. What's your experience with those? Seems like huge risk to put squad of tacticals clocking in 400+ pts when single lascannon has pretty darned good chance of fragging entire squad in one shot...(IIRC about 13% chance of hit fragging rhino and entire squad in one go. Plus decent chance of half the squad dying just like that if you got lucky and avoided total destruction).

Albeit MAYBE we are overcautious. Since we don't actually have much of transport MODELS except chimeras there's not been much in form of trying transports in game.

Yep, agreed. Rhinos are dangerous. It's always a bit of a crap shoot. That being said, Rhinos also can move to where you need them in a single turn...while moving fast (negative to hit). Stop the next turn and deploy --- I think they even have some firing ports.

In general transporting is pretty dangerous. It's such a crapshoot.

You may miss...
You may hit something useless...
You may fail to penetrate...
You may get a lucky shot and blow the whole thing up with everyone in it...

Good luck! I think we'll be sticking with them for now. We're concentrating on activations being different so transports would be a bit safer if you don't have an entire 3000 point army shooting at them during one turn I suppose.

"The edition that looks best under my rose tinted goggles"

Really, it's the same argument as 'which zelda game is the best' or 'which saturday morning cartoon was the best'. It's far to based in nostalgia to fairly judge.

I love 7th edition. It's got so much more to play with, and it's much more 'complete' than previous editions.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Brother SRM wrote:
I loved 6th. You got the hardback codices with the lavish production and great art

The problem was that this came at a dramatically increased price and weight (no more carrying a backpack with every codex) with most of the art just being photoshop colorized B&W art.

Introduction of hull points, meaning vehicles won't get stunlocked for 6 turns anymore

Lets not forget that this made them so easy to kill that vehicle heavy armies, particularly non skimmer vehicle armies, became practically nonexistent. Tracked tanks and walkers have never recovered from this change and largely continue to show very poorly into 7th (except when theyre free like in a Gladius... )

Multiple power weapon types with drawbacks and benefits for each

in a game where such a miniscule detail really has very little purpose or benefit at the scale it is played, with only 1 or 2 options ever really used if there's a choice

The new art in 6th was really damn good. They did colorize some old B&W art for it, yes, but there was lots of lovely new art. The art in 7th has largely been pretty uninspiring, including a lot of actual tracings of photos of models, and the least inspiring color plates in codices ever. Seriously, the ones in the Space Marines codex are dire and look like they were done in Flash in 5 minutes.

Vehicles are easier to kill, but they're also better at getting to do their jobs. While my Rhino might not live til turn 6 anymore, it will actually get to move those first two turns to get the guys inside into position.. I play a lot of vehicle-heavy armies and I've had no complaints with the hullpoints system at all. It's even made models with the repair rule semi useful!

I like it because it can lead to more unique units and you can further customize characters to suit your preferences. if they reverted it to the old power weapon rules I wouldn't mind too much, but I like that they're there.

 Brennonjw wrote:
"The edition that looks best under my rose tinted goggles"

Really, it's the same argument as 'which zelda game is the best' or 'which saturday morning cartoon was the best'. It's far to based in nostalgia to fairly judge.

Dunno. Obviously the best edition for each person is the one they are playing.

I like the current one best. I've played every edition of the game since it came out. 7th is the best system for the rules, army compositions, and missions.

It's not perfect, but it is the best of the 7ish. It's hard to say seven total editions, as 1st was really at least two, as was 3rd. We're actually on the 9th ruleset.

 Brennonjw wrote:
"The edition that looks best under my rose tinted goggles"

Nope. I've been saying fifth edition was the best edition to 40k since fifth edition's Codex: Space Marines came out. Claiming it's rose tinted glasses when I've been consistent over the years is lame.

 Melissia wrote:

 Brennonjw wrote:
"The edition that looks best under my rose tinted goggles"

Nope. I've been saying fifth edition was the best edition to 40k since fifth edition's Codex: Space Marines came out. Claiming it's rose tinted glasses when I've been consistent over the years is lame.

consistancy does not mean that there is no nostalgic bias though :(

I fully under nostalgic bias, and I can see where it applies to a lot of things.

I have a large nostalgic attraction to the "feel" of 2nd edition 40K. I don't think it's a brilliant rules set but the armies/codices etc. are excellent.

That being said, people who prefer older editions are not always being nostalgic. While technology has improved dramatically and allowed us a lot of things (PDF codices, dice apps, better computer designed plastic kits for vehicles etc.) there hasn't been a technological advance in the development of game rules or fluff. That stuff is essentially untouchable by tech and doesn't necessarily "get better" as editions develop.

Now, categorically stating that everything beyond 1992 is garbage and that this:



...is somehow a brilliant sculpt and nothing after it was ever worthwhile...yeah. That's rose-tinted-goggles in the extreme.

Nostalgia (by definition): a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations

While I had a great time as a teenager playing 2nd edition, I still thoroughly enjoy it today. My enjoyment of the game has very little to do with nostalgia...it's not as if the game is crap and I'm merely playing it to relive my youth. I genuinely enjoy the game.

Elbows, I absolutely agree with you about every point, both positive and negative, about 2nd edition. So much frigging fun.

Also an absolute blast (and easy) to make into a very small skirmish game (like Necromunda, with obvious reasons as it was based off 2nd edition core rules).

2nd edition did what it did originally very well-where an army is a couple of squads, a hero or three, and a couple vehicles. It eventually became hugely bogged down for the exact same reasons as 6/7th. Too much stuff jammed in.

Hmm...it sounds like I need to take closer look back at my 2E stuff (that's the one that had the Dark Millennium box set, right?) and 5th (on the latter, sounds like I should avoid the 5E Necron book and use the older one).

For those who are playing older editions do you allow units from newer editions (ex., Riptide or Centurions - not that I'd necessarily use them, but as obvious examples) into the older game, and if so, how do you handle the rules?

 Elbows wrote:

...is somehow a brilliant sculpt and nothing after it was ever worthwhile...yeah. That's rose-tinted-goggles in the extreme.

Nostalgia (by definition): a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations

While I had a great time as a teenager playing 2nd edition, I still thoroughly enjoy it today. My enjoyment of the game has very little to do with nostalgia...it's not as if the game is crap and I'm merely playing it to relive my youth. I genuinely enjoy the game.

Yeah. Model wise it's harder to claim quality hasn't gone up and hey I do buy current models rather than seek 2nd ed models just because. Though while technically new models beat old ones hands down sometimes style has taken backward step. Too much bling and while for example AOS models are technically awesome they are too much WOW style I don't like.

But beauty with this is I can take whatever models I like. Just because I play 2nd ed doesn't mean I can't buy current models!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stormonu wrote:
Hmm...it sounds like I need to take closer look back at my 2E stuff (that's the one that had the Dark Millennium box set, right?) and 5th (on the latter, sounds like I should avoid the 5E Necron book and use the older one).

For those who are playing older editions do you allow units from newer editions (ex., Riptide or Centurions - not that I'd necessarily use them, but as obvious examples) into the older game, and if so, how do you handle the rules?

Yes. Since we aren't playing current official rules we can say screw "officialdom" House rules! For example IG has got bunch of russ variants that didn't exists. Should we throw models away?

I got idea of making daemon world army(mostly out of good laugh for being able to incorporate chaos warriors, trolls and beastmen models into 40k). Now daemon world army REQUIRES daemon prince. All those are special characters(no generic daemon prince). There's 4 in codex but codex itself ENCOURAGES you to create your own(daemon world army required concent from opponent anyway). So now I'm thinking up my own daemon prince. Probably either tzeentch or khorne as those daemons I have(you can only take daemons of god whose daemon prince you have)

I like 7th the best, and I started in 3rd. Though I was sad when 7th nerfed my two bloodthirster three daemon prince army.

I feel that 5th was the best "overall" edition. While some codex's were better prior/after, the basic core rules worked best with the fewest major flaws in 5th. Every edition fixes some things while breaking others. 5th had IMO the fewest issues compared to others.

I started out in 2nd edition. I'd love to play that one again.
3rd was..different. It was ok. Hand to Hand sucked. youd bassicly make a chain of power weapon/killy dudes to kill anything that could hurt a power fist or thunder hammer, kill everything near those so they could bat cleanup with out being threatened, if I remember.
3.5 and 4th editions were an improvement for Hand to Hand.
My Orks were fantastic. The the 4th edition codex came out and 5th edition followed a few months later. 5th was Ok, but had a massive problem. Hand to Hand combat and combat resolution. I started to stop finding 40K fun about half way through. I didn't like that, as I felt at the time, 40K forced you to wring out your codex until only a few good units came out.
But that codex was crap. How can I play Orks with out fielding Orks.. I took a long brake 6th cam out I played maybe 10 games of 6th. it seemed ok. I wasn't a fan of allies at all. I didn't like them because there were none I wanted to use. I just wanted more slots for more Ork units. But as most people will remember things like 1999+1 came around to keep armies from having access to a second foc. Which I felt at the time Orks needed. An easy fix would have been just giving some armies access to the allied slots in stead of allies. Then 7th came out. and here we are. It feels like second ed to me some times. I enjoy it for the most part. If we could just get the 4th edition hand to hand back I think I would like it better. even with random charge range. which did save me big time last Saturday. A large squad of Dark Furies in terrain 2" away and they rolled a total of 3. Brilliant!
I have no expectations for 8th edition we either will or wont play it.

I guess the 2nd ed nostalgia doesn't include games where you didn't even get a turn. I saw loyalist marine lists tabled one turn 1 by both Eldar and CSM. Great game.

I don't understand the 2nd edition nostalgia. Well, I do; it's nostalgia.

That game was fundamentally terrible though. It was outrageously over-complicated and featured armies that consisted of one-man and his bullet sponges.

I was a 4th starter, 5th I liked for the 'charge from outflank' scout army I had until scouts were nerfed the first time around and I still sometimes miss the 'fearless means you take more wounds in CC' factor which should have been kept. I don't miss the "roll to hit for blast weapons" at all, nor the wound allocation shenanigans of the nob bike period.

Frankly 7th is Fine for me. Though my 15 liters of tanks aren't as good as they were when I bought them, since i've now grown out of the club competition stage of the hobby it's no big deal.

That and 7th is actually fairly viable at handling the type of game I play most, i.e. 5k+ thanks to massive power spikes everywhere which removes double integer percentages of the table per turn.

3rd edition was the most streamlined, but really had to be played with the Trial Assault Rules and Trial Vehicle Rules. However, it had the worst imbalance of codexes. That said, the missions were simple, the game plays intuitively, and while wound allocation wasn't really realistic (the owning player simply chose casualties), it was smooth and fair.

Fifth edition had probably the best overall ruleset. There was pretty consistent power creep among the codexes, wound allocation was really dumb, and vehicles were probably a touch overpowered. It centralized a lot of USRs, and the post 3rd edition universe was mature enough that for the most part, units and armies played like they should.

7th edition, for me, is the worst edition I've played (3rd-7th), because the game has become more complicated for no real gain in tactical depth or strategic choice. The amount of randomness in the game now is a bit bizarre, with random psychic powers, warlord traits, mysterious objectives, etc. That all being said, there are plenty of elements I like, such as hull points, overwatch, and the greater freedom to build armies. The psychic phase is a push for me, in that I like the resource allocation aspect, as its one of the few areas in the game where additional rules lead to interesting choices, but in practice psychic powers are either a pleasant bonus, or an engineered effort to secure one of the handful of mega powers.

The best aspects of 7th edition could easily be ported into 3rd or 5th edition, and the game would play faster, be less frustrating, and still allow for tactical choices.

Yes, 2nd edition was kinda strange. Hand to hand wasn't very practical from my experience. I think it would have been much better with slight changes to unit coherency Space Marines had it rough. Elday Orks and IG I think had it better.
Warpspiders were the robot devil.

I have no nostalgia for 2nd ed as I still play it. I find it far less complicated than 7th, and most criticisms I get are from people who never played it.

 obithius wrote:
I have no nostalgia for 2nd ed as I still play it. I find it far less complicated than 7th, and most criticisms I get are from people who never played it.

I played it. It sucked badly.