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 Matt.Kingsley wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
To hit modifiers can't work on a D6.

They worked fine in WHFB.

Very different game. A game that I think sucked, btw.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stormonu wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
Of course they do. -1 for soft cover like bushes. -2 for craters and trees. -3 for ruins. -4 for fortified buildings. Stealth is -1, shrouded is -2.
A six always hits, of course. Some very special units like Vindicares could ignore cover.

Those end up not working. You need a D10 or D20.

Bull, it works with a D6 just as well.

No, it doesn't because even a-1 to hit is enormous.

2nd ed was a dumpster fire of epic proportions.

Bolt Action works just fine with negative modifiers to hit on a D6. Your argument is invalid.

I don't know Bolt Action, and I"m not willing to take just your word on it. To-hit mods is one of the things that made 2nd ed a dumpster fire. Cheapass hormagaunts gave everything a -2 to hit them just for "moving fast". That made them far too durable for their cost and that snowballed into making the Tyranids neigh invincible.

Hi folks.
I have played 40k from RT days to the start of 5th ed.(Then gave up on GW ever sorting out game play issues.)

And I generally agree with the sentiment that the massive change from 2nd ed to 3rd ed was where the 40k rules lost their way.

Rick Priestly admitted in interview that 3rd ed 40k was an '11th hour rush job.'
The studio had been working on a refined skirmish game, EG 2nd ed cleaned up, and tweeked for about 3 years.But GW sales department wanted to up the model count to match the levels of minatures used in WHFB.So the devs had a matter of weeks to write a 40k battle game!

So it is not surprising how many 'over sights' made it into the 3rd ed rules.(The dev team have asked to be allowed a complete re write of the 40k rules since 4th ed!)

If you use the analogy of tactical complexity is muscle , and complicated rules are fat.

2nd ed Ed 40k was a 'sumo wrestler'.quite a bit of fat, but lots of muscle to keep it moving.

3rd ed just cut so much muscle away when trimming the fat, you are left with a weak blob that can hardly move .And it gained so much weight over the last few editions it needs the players to carry it everywhere!

And every other game I play has a power- lifter or body builder rule set in comparison!

Many people want to just go back to the resolution methods used in 2nd ed.(Based on 1970s Napoleonic game design.)
And ignore the last 40 years of development in game design?


The AP system is flawed and leads to a complete lack of proportional results .So the rules need to add on extra special rules to get some sort of definition back.
Armour save modifiers are ok but they are more complicated than other options, and as pointed out they run in to limitations when using a D6.

So why not use a simple and effective alternative that gets the proportionality of the ASM without the restrictions and complication in the rules?

Its like limiting your power options to steam or sail , when there is a wide range of more modern propulsion systems available.

In short..
40k was stuck with WHFB based rules in the 1980s to allow cross over from the more popular fantasy game.
The scale and the scope of the game changed significantly at the insistence of the GW sales department in 3rd ed.
And the devs have never been allowed to address the serious game play issues with a much needed re write to reflect the new scale and scope of the 40k battle game .

 Elbows wrote:
Personally, I vastly preferred 2nd, even with its flaws and would have preferred to see a massaged 2nd edition as opposed to the fire sale that was 3rd edition. When 3rd launched it was quite shocking to me. It was akin to someone taking your chess set away and replacing it with checkers. There was a heck of a lot of "wait, but what about..." - "that's gone.". The game in 2nd felt a heck of a lot more like the fluff and it showed on the table top.

...

One thing which was exceptionally tough to understand was the huge nerfing of every unit in the game, across the board. This has carried on and made things difficult for GW the past ten years. In the Eldar army for example, Exarchs went from powerful characters to mediocre squad leaders. Warlocks went from potent (psykers were almost universally available in three "levels" in 2nd edition) battlefield psykers to hopeless buff-machines with no capability to actually fight in combat on the tabletop. Even things like the Avatar had their stats chopped tremendously. By doing this GW shrunk tremendously the area it had to work within for 3rd-7th edition. They did the same thing when they changed vehicles to be armour 10-14. That's not much variation. They now struggle and have to create new rules/hull points etc. to justify larger or stronger vehicles. Same thing with the stat lines. A Space Marine captain's stat lines were a joke compared to 2nd...so this then requires even more of the un-ending special rules added to later editions (instead of simply having a kick ass stat line which expresses how excellent he is/was). GW really put themselves in a corner by limiting the scope of stats for so many units. I'll break out the old 3rd ed and 2nd ed. Eldar codices later and give you proper examples.

If someone had taken 2nd and modified, cleaned it up, etc. it would have been a brilliant game. I've debated trying to do so myself. However it would have never supported the huge increase in models/stuff on the table that they're pushing, so it died a quick death. Personally I'd gladly play a 2nd edition game which took all afternoon. With good friends it was a heck of a good time.

The Harlequins going absent and Avatar rules "decapitation" were probably the hardest for me personally. Avatar because I finally got the model and converted it to resemble the iconic artwork from 2nd ed codex just two months before 3rd ed happened... Imagine my rage, when Avatar went from 300pts beast god incarnated immune to half of popular weaponry, to a silly 80pts useless deamon with a 5++ save... Exarches and Warlocks dropping the independent character status were also hard to accept... That is why I have dropped 40K in less than a year after 3rd ed premiere (I have played solely Necromunda for a bit, but then it died in my area when BFG and some other miniature games came out).

A fun personal fact from my history: when I finally quit 40K back then, I said to my fellow players, that I'll return when Harlequins are reintroduced as a proper army. When, because some quite convoluted reasons, I finally returned to 40K, it was just after Harlies finally got their codex - the fact that I was unaware of at the moment of making my decision of returning to the hobby

2nd edition is not a game I would ever go back to - it was, in fact the edition that drove me away from 40K until late 5th - but what 3E has become isn't much better. GW does need to tear the game system down and completely rebuild it, but to do so they need to be serious about it and scrap their "design the rules around the model" method they use now.

They also need to hire some real professional rules writers - and playtest the damn stuff they do write. Until then, it's still just them whizzing in the wind and hope it hits the dartboard.

That's not to say there aren't ideas and stories from the older editions that they should draw on, but the mechanics probably isn't anything they need to carry forward.

Second Edition. A slow but interesting skirmish game. Lots of interesting toys and maneuvers (smoke grenades, vortex bombs, and Leman Russ firing from off the board oh my)

However it was extremely cumbersome. Hero hammer was a thing, HtH combat was just downright hard, and it had all the problems of 40K now.

I seem to remember that he who went first generally won with really tweeked armies.

To counter all the negativity, I'll post that I like both systems and think that they work pretty well for their purpose. Both systems groan a bit under the number of special rules/codexes/combos and circumstances available, but if you played games with each systems using fairly basic units, both systems work. I played the **** out of 2nd, and have played every edition since with the biggest lull in my activity during 5th. I consider 4th to be the pinnacle, but I'm also having a lot of fun now. Overall I'm a staunch defender of the post-3rd paradigm, but would be happy to play 2nd if the opportunity arose.


On Movement:

Not mentioned in the original post is the systemic dropping of anything other than a D6. I think this was a clever move by GW to make the game more accessible. All sorts of games have D6s, and it's easy to raid them for more dice. Rolls are also more visually clear when compared to other dice. Whether you like them or not, the game was built around them. For movement the D6 meant a 6" move was natural, and any modifiers to it became proportional. Difficult Terrain is 2D6 take the highest, Very Difficult was a single D6, Fleet and Run use the same mechanics.

On differences between troop speed:

The difference between Rapid-Fire and Assault weapons had an overall effect on unit speed. At the opening of 3rd, in order to Rapid Fire a unit could not move, so Marines could only fire twice if they were stationary, and could fire once one the move. If they fired at all, they could not charge. On the other hand, Eldar (Guardians and Dire Avengers) with their Assault weapons were free to move, shoot and charge in the same turn. The result is that they were waaay faster than Marines once they started engaging in firefights. The particulars have changed some over time, Marines can Rapid-Fire on the move (but still not assault), but Eldar now have their Battle Focus rule, which still keeps them way faster than a Tactical Marine. The combination of weapons rules (Assault vs. Rapid Fire) and the rules Fleet and Battle Focus make the difference between models far, far more more interesting than the old move stat (Marine 4, Eldar 5). The difference between a single inch of movement was almost negligible.

Another thing not mentioned by the OP is that weapon ranges were reduced, in many cases by half. So on the one hand, basic infantry sped up, but on the other hand weapon ranges went down. On the large scale, this meant that unit maneuvering became more meaningful. If you wanted your basic weapons to count for something, you had to get close. If you wanted to avoid the full fire weight of an enemy squad, it was easier to get around them. Without changing the table size, the game now simulated a larger battlefield.

Martel732 wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
To hit modifiers can't work on a D6.

They worked fine in WHFB.

Very different game. A game that I think sucked, btw.

Depends from the edition. Also, best 40k never required the skill that the best WHFB required.

Martel732 wrote:
Cheapass hormagaunts gave everything a -2 to hit them just for "moving fast".

Did Hormagaunts have M 11? Or a special rule? (-2 to hit against targets moving > 20", Run = 2x M)

For playing a detailed game featuring roughly platoon-level forces, 2nd edition is best . For large company-level battles, 3rd-7th. All five of those editions would probably have something I'd cherry-pick. In both cases, don't bother with the codex books, and stick to the army lists included with the rules.

3rd edition streamlined larger games by removing fiddly details that don't really matter at that scale (and in some cases were too fiddly for 2nd, really; the aforementioned guddling about with individual LOS arcs. Not the sort of thing a platoon Lieutenant should be worrying about). It did the same thing that Epic 40,000 had done, but got away with it. Then they've spent the next seventeen years shovelling all the complexity back in.

Here's an example of the dumbing down from 2nd to 3rd.

Avatar
300 Points
M WS BS S T W I A LD
6 10 10 8 8 7 10 5 10
-Commander (can lead your army)
-Special invulnerabilities due to its molten body (ignores flamers, plasma, and melta weapons)
-Ignores Psychology
-2+ Save which can only be modified up to 4+ at worst.
-Causes Terror
-Rules which impact greater daemons, impact the Avatar
-Comes with the Wailing Doom which is pretty nasty and can be thrown up to 12" in addition to being wicked in hand to hand combat

Avatar
80 Points
WS BS S T W I A LD
10 - 6 6 4 5 3 10
-Fearless
-Inspiring
-Independent Character (this wasn't a thing in 2nd ed.)
-Monstrous Creature
-Invulnerable save (5+)
-Counts as demon

So in the newer edition the Avatar became subject to flamers, meltas, and plasma, and with a Toughness of 6 and 5+ invulnerable - died to a simple squad of Space Marine bolt guns rapid-firing. The Wailing Doom was less effective and no longer had a ranged attack option. The wounds are about equivalent (in 2nd ed. weapons did varying numbers of wounds, so the 7 wounds is not as "incredible" as it sounds --- though again it would give the Avatar much longer life span against being spammed to death by small arms - if any could wound the Tough 8 fella). All in all the Avatar went from a seriously dangerous imposing guy to just "eh...hose him down with bolt guns". As mentioned though, this was all likely intentional to speed the game up.

Another kick in the pants for the Eldar was the complete re-write of Shuriken Catapults. In 2nd ed. they were equivalent to a Storm Bolter (actually better). Suddenly they're 12" mediocre guns? This slew Dire Avengers (until eventually they were retconned with "better" shuriken catapults...and eventually even more special rules to make them purposeful).

I don't claim to say either is the "better" edition...but it was a huge change. People worry about having models made irrelevant between editions --- 3rd was a HUGE change for all the armies. A lot of cool models and characters became far less cool/useful. 2nd ed. for all of its flaws though, was far "cooler". You felt like you were getting something special when you picked up a codex. There was far more character in the armies, and that's something I'm sad to see slowly fade.

That was somewhat unrelated to the change in the rules emphasis. I mean, Shuriken catapults could have been retconned into short-ranged carbines in 2nd edition too.

I agree, though (and so did GW, quite quickly!) that the thin codex books were a mistake. That idea ended with the revised Chaos book, the Inquisition books, Necrons and Tau, IIRC.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Cheapass hormagaunts gave everything a -2 to hit them just for "moving fast".

Did Hormagaunts have M 11? Or a special rule? (-2 to hit against targets moving > 20", Run = 2x M)

For playing a detailed game featuring roughly platoon-level forces, 2nd edition is best . For large company-level battles, 3rd-7th. All five of those editions would probably have something I'd cherry-pick. In both cases, don't bother with the codex books, and stick to the army lists included with the rules.

3rd edition streamlined larger games by removing fiddly details that don't really matter at that scale (and in some cases were too fiddly for 2nd, really; the aforementioned guddling about with individual LOS arcs. Not the sort of thing a platoon Lieutenant should be worrying about). It did the same thing that Epic 40,000 had done, but got away with it. Then they've spent the next seventeen years shovelling all the complexity back in.

Getting 2nd ed into quick version is quite fast actually. Doesn't take much house rules to get it working fast.

It's hell of a easier to make good game out of 2nd ed than 7th ed that's hopelessly broken everywhere.

"Did Hormagaunts have M 11? Or a special rule?"

They had a special rule that let them do it. It was broken.

Martel732 wrote:
"Did Hormagaunts have M 11? Or a special rule?"

They had a special rule that let them do it. It was broken.

Checked straight from my copy of 2nd ed Tyranid codex: they had 12" run plus 6" Leap, for a maximum of 18" move and -1 to hit modifier for rapid moving target. You're probably confused by another -1 to hit modifier they usually had, a soft-cover modifier when firing overwatch, because they could leap up to 3" vertically and ignore terrain penalties for the "leap" part of movement so they practically always charged from behind cover.

Edited multiple times to rewrite the cover part for clarity.

nou wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Did Hormagaunts have M 11? Or a special rule?"

They had a special rule that let them do it. It was broken.

Checked straight from my copy of 2nd ed Tyranid codex: they had 12" run plus 6" Leap, for a maximum of 18" move and -1 to hit modifier for rapid moving target. You're probably confused by another -1 to hit modifier they usually had, a soft-cover modifier when firing overwatch, because they could leap up to 3" vertically and ignore terrain penalties for the "leap" part of movement.

Okay I knew they were -2 to hit almost all the time. Still absurd.

Curious why you think that's absurd?

Because of how cheap they were and being forced to shoot the closest model.

Being forced to shoot the closest was fairly easily worked around with model placement.... All you had to do in most cases was make sure that the closest enemy was not in your fire arc, if you wanted to shoot something else.

Not entirely foolproof (if the target you wanted was directly behind another unit, for example) but helped considerably.

 insaniak wrote:
Being forced to shoot the closest was fairly easily worked around with model placement.... All you had to do in most cases was make sure that the closest enemy was not in your fire arc, if you wanted to shoot something else.

Not entirely foolproof (if the target you wanted was directly behind another unit, for example) but helped considerably.

Tyranid players knew how to game this. It was all a gigantic hassle.

At which point, the answer was one word: Eversor.

That never seemed to work out for eversor users. He'd end up with 6 genestealers on him and die. It was all a giant dumpster fire, especially with Tyranid strategy cards.

 Elbows wrote:
Here's an example of the dumbing down from 2nd to 3rd.

Avatar
300 Points
M WS BS S T W I A LD
6 10 10 8 8 7 10 5 10
-Commander (can lead your army)
-Special invulnerabilities due to its molten body (ignores flamers, plasma, and melta weapons)
-Ignores Psychology
-2+ Save which can only be modified up to 4+ at worst.
-Causes Terror
-Rules which impact greater daemons, impact the Avatar
-Comes with the Wailing Doom which is pretty nasty and can be thrown up to 12" in addition to being wicked in hand to hand combat

Avatar
80 Points
WS BS S T W I A LD
10 - 6 6 4 5 3 10
-Fearless
-Inspiring
-Independent Character (this wasn't a thing in 2nd ed.)
-Monstrous Creature
-Invulnerable save (5+)
-Counts as demon

So in the newer edition the Avatar became subject to flamers, meltas, and plasma, and with a Toughness of 6 and 5+ invulnerable - died to a simple squad of Space Marine bolt guns rapid-firing. The Wailing Doom was less effective and no longer had a ranged attack option. The wounds are about equivalent (in 2nd ed. weapons did varying numbers of wounds, so the 7 wounds is not as "incredible" as it sounds --- though again it would give the Avatar much longer life span against being spammed to death by small arms - if any could wound the Tough 8 fella). All in all the Avatar went from a seriously dangerous imposing guy to just "eh...hose him down with bolt guns". As mentioned though, this was all likely intentional to speed the game up.

Another kick in the pants for the Eldar was the complete re-write of Shuriken Catapults. In 2nd ed. they were equivalent to a Storm Bolter (actually better). Suddenly they're 12" mediocre guns? This slew Dire Avengers (until eventually they were retconned with "better" shuriken catapults...and eventually even more special rules to make them purposeful).

I don't claim to say either is the "better" edition...but it was a huge change. People worry about having models made irrelevant between editions --- 3rd was a HUGE change for all the armies. A lot of cool models and characters became far less cool/useful. 2nd ed. for all of its flaws though, was far "cooler". You felt like you were getting something special when you picked up a codex. There was far more character in the armies, and that's something I'm sad to see slowly fade.

Well, 2nd Ed did become known as "Hero Hammer".

In contrast to the Avatar, Marneus Calgar had a 2+ Save in 3rd, no Inv. If you shot him with a Meltagun he would die outright. Despite that, I would argue that MCs in 3rd were more survivable, since Lascannons didn't do 2D6 wounds anymore. I rarely saw an Avatar or Bloodthirster get into combat in 2nd, while in 3rd I saw Bloodthirsters table armies.

In terms of army character, that's definitely something they've been bringing back. Just look at all the fancy rules for Aspect Warriors now. The Legions book is full of awesome characterful rules.


Edit: And in 3rd, since the Avatar was an Independent Character, you couldn't target it anyways unless it was the closest model.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Well, 2nd Ed did become known as "Hero Hammer".

Largely because of MAD strategy. Simply taking tons of cheap stuff counters super characters nicely. Biggest issue comes from certain eldar exarch builds and psykers.

But bloodthirsters etc? Have fun killing cheap troops one model at a time.

tneva82 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Well, 2nd Ed did become known as "Hero Hammer".

Largely because of MAD strategy. Simply taking tons of cheap stuff counters super characters nicely. Biggest issue comes from certain eldar exarch builds and psykers.

But bloodthirsters etc? Have fun killing cheap troops one model at a time.

I dunno about cheap stuff, as Marines weren't particularly cheap. My solution was usually something like a Dreadnought with Assault Cannon on Overwatch.

Level 4 psykers were the champions in my 2nd Ed meta for sure though. Lots of cheap troops would have either been Orks or Tyranids, anything else would have likely gotten Virus Grenaded.

Martel732 wrote:
That never seemed to work out for eversor users. He'd end up with 6 genestealers on him and die. It was all a giant dumpster fire, especially with Tyranid strategy cards.

That wasn't my experience. The Eversor ate Genestealers for breakfast, particularly since the more models attacked him, the more attack dice he wound up rolling.

 insaniak wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
That never seemed to work out for eversor users. He'd end up with 6 genestealers on him and die. It was all a giant dumpster fire, especially with Tyranid strategy cards.

That wasn't my experience. The Eversor ate Genestealers for breakfast, particularly since the more models attacked him, the more attack dice he wound up rolling.

Attack dice didn't scale like the +1 WS did. In fact, attack dice could back fire quite spectacularly. It was better to roll a moderate amount and have a HUGE WS.

Lots of interesting points have been made. I was going to run this discussion phase by phase but it seems the discussion has already covered most of the game. Oh well. Here goes;

Movement continued
I was saving the discussion of overwatch for the shooting phase, but yes, you had to declare it at the start of your turn before moving any models. This wasn't great for one reason - players had to look over fire arcs etc. for every model in their army before making any decisions. If overwatch were to be kept, being allowed to declare it at any point in the movement phase would go a long way towards speeding things up. Also, when you resolved the shots in your opponent's turn you did so in their movement phase. This was highly disruptive. More on that later.

Shooting
In hindsight, the changes to shooting were far bigger than they seemed at the time.
Weapons went from single shot, sustained fire, and move-or-shoot or not to: pistol, rapid fire, assault, heavy, ordnance (and eventually salvo). The lack of a way to have a single shot weapon which neither requires standing still nor allows you to charge after firing still seems like a gap today. This is one of those tricky areas where I have no idea what I'd do. I like assault weapons too much to want to scrap the idea of shooting and charging in the same turn. One thing I do know is that I hated rapid fire in 3rd edition for exactly the same reason I hate salvo now. It's the choice between remain stationary and shoot to full range, or move and not shoot at all due to your range being halved. Salvo weapons may as well be heavy in my mind because the half range issue usually results in not getting to shoot anyway. The subsequent changes to rapid fire feel much better to me- they encourage movement around the table which makes objective based missions possible.

Sustained fire went away (for those that don't know, it was roughly a D3, but one side on the die would jam your gun instead of giving 3 shots) and was replaced by assault x and heavy x. This is one of those bits where things went weird for no reason. Replacing the die is fine, getting rid of jam entirely was a relief. It's how they converted from one set of numbers to the other that boggles the mind. Logically (if we ignore jam) a D3 averages out to be 2 shots a round. Looking at shuriken catapults, storm bolters and other 1 sustained fire dice weapons, that converted nicely into assault 2 or heavy 2. All good so far. But then the 2 and 3 sustained fire dice weapons got converted into.... heavy 3. What? A heavy bolter went from an expected 4 shots down to 3 shots. An assault cannon went from 6 down to 3 and eventually got put back to 4. Why? That never sat right with me.

Jam was awful. The game typically lasted 4 turns. If you roll a jam, not only do you not fire this turn, but you have to track that fact and not fire next turn either. Yuck. Don't get me started on needing to hit before you rolled to see if your gun jammed or not. Recharging plasma guns was another 'track it next turn' problem. This got replaced with Gets Hot! Another rule I dislike.

Infantry, and indeed all models, had fire arcs. For a really small scale game this makes sense. For a miniatures game where the models have dynamic poses it makes no sense at all. Which way is the model facing? The way its head is pointing or the way its gun is pointing? What about the other gun in the off-hand? Did I mention that you had to do your pivoting in the movement phase, so not only the position of the model was important but you had to make sure everyone was facing just the right way. I'm so glad this went away.

And firing arcs tied into split fire. Any model could shoot at the closest target (which in my recollection meant the closest enemy model, not closest unit by the way) so you'd often be rolling for every shot individually. This took forever. People complain about to hit modifiers taking time, but if you ask me this is where the real time delay was. Switching to unit-to-unit fire fights was a good move. The lack of ability to split off other weapons remains an issue however. If I were writing 3rd edition now, I'd say 'all weapons of the same type in a unit must fire at the same target unit'. That way you're still ensuring that your 7 bolters will be rolled together without hindering the ability to actually make sensible use of that melta gun or lascannon.

While not part of the shooting phase, the other thing about overwatch which I intensely disliked was just how disruptive it could be. I often fought against Imperial Guard, which meant a lot of units (even back in those days of smaller games). There was more than one occasion where so many models were on overwatch that by the time my opponent finished firing (in my turn) he had convinced himself that it was actually his turn and tried to proceed to hand-to-hand phase before I'd finished moving. From a tactical warfare standpoint, overwatch needs to exist. The way we used to play it was must never return though (and I think was due in part to us forgetting the -1 to hit penalty for overwatch).

Sometime ago I convinced myself that twin linked meant re-roll to wound in 2nd ed. This was wrong. It was double your shots. I like this. I want it to return. It's faster than a reroll and it doesn't stop being useful if you have high ballistic skill.

To Hit modifiers, save modifiers and cover saves. Three separate changes which are so entwined that I feel they must be discussed together. Others have commented up thread how determining to hit modifiers was slow. That's true, but it doesn't have to be. The issue comes back to determining modifiers on a model by model basis, and the plethora of modifiers that existed. Soft cover, hard cover, emerging from cover, speed, size, equipment (targetters). The list seemed endless. In and of themselves to-hit modifiers are not the problem. It's how many there were and the fact you calculated them one model at a time. Shifting towards unit-to-unit determination and culling a lot of the modifiers would speed things up without having the weird dichotomy of cover saves where cover is irrelevant half of the time. Similarly, people often lament how 'power armour was useless' because virtually every weapon had at least a -1 save modifier. To that I say, let's shift all modifiers by one. All those bolters etc. are now save mod 0. Hey presto, power armour is 3+ again.

Wounds. This is a very important point. Weapons did a varying number of wounds. This is what stopped monstrous creatures from being as invisible as they have become in 7th edition. In 2nd the number of wounds was often a polyhedral die. That level of variety and complexity is probably not required, but having some way to deal multiple wounds (other than by instant death) would be welcome. I can think of a number of ways to handle this, but I have no idea which would work best. Perhaps the simplest answer is the best; replace all those die with fixed numbers.

Assault
It's probably quicker to list the things that didn't change, but I'll try anyway.

Model to model vs unit to unit. This was a good change. It sped things up dramatically. With it WS, I and A all took on new meanings in the mechanics. This was done rather well even if it did take a few editions to get to where we are now. This is one area where I see the rules actually improved as each edition came along. Mechanically 7th edition combat works well, though I think there is still room for improvement, particularly with regard to how WS is utilized.

Pistols no longer use their profile in combat. Odd, but counterbalanced to a degree by the whole move/shoot/charge thing. This issue really needs to be considered in conjunction with that point.

Hand-to-hand was another area where the number of modifiers was too high. There are 6 modifiers to combat score you need to remember before you even throw codex rules into the mix. Too many modifiers means too much time working things out. Again, I prefer the way 3rd-7th handle this.

Swords, lightning claws, shields and a few other things could parry. To my recollection this is why everyone had a sword of some sort and you never saw a power axe. The diversity in the rules was nice, but the end result (at least in my play group) was no diversity on the battle field. Parry was too damn good.

Speaking of diversity, there was a huge amount of it in close combat weapons compared with 3rd edition. 7th has gone a long way to restoring this and I am glad of that fact. I see no reason for melee weapons to be homogenised at the same time as ranged weapons were diversified.

Psychics
Much like close combat the way psykers and psychic powers are handled has changed so many times that it's hard to remember exactly which rule came from which edition. 2nd ed (with the Dark Millennium expansion) had a whole card game going on inside your regular game of 40k. Bad move. Fluffy, but slow and unbalanced. With a lot of armies bringing your own psyker made the enemy psyker more powerful by increasing the number of cards being handed out. 3rd went to the opposite extreme where a psychic power was just a gun which required a leadership test to use. This is fantasy knights, orcs and elves, in space, with magic. Magic needs to be more than just a gun you can't see. I think 2nd and 7th are both 'too far' and both bad in approximately the same way. That problem is that psykers feed off each other. The more psykers you have the more cards (2nd ed) or dice (7th ed) you have and therefore the more you can abuse the system. 6th edition psychics may not have been perfect but they were better than either of these messes.

Recovery
Not much to say here, I just wanted to call out the fact that this was an actual phase rather than 'at the beginning of your turn' or 'before the movement phase'.

Oh wait, morale. Space Marines didn't have And They Shall Know No Fear. They had Shaken instead. Failed 1 morale check? Stand still if you want but you can't approach the enemy. Failed a second? Run away like everyone else.

Army Selection
This may be the elephant in the room. No force org chart to constrain you into choices that don't make sense vs no percentages to ensure that you don't just take 60 points of gretchin. Neither of these sits well with me by itself. In 2nd it was >25% squads, <50% characters, <50% support. That was it. Not very limiting because those squads could be terminators and 50% on characters left too much room for hero-hammer. Whereas in 3rd-6th people could just min-max by taking 2 minimum units of their cheapest troop. Let's not get started on 7th's formations and detachments.
This is one of those areas where I feel both methods have a point but that the best answer is to mix the two together. In my re-write of 7th (Project Zeta) I settled on doing exactly that. The Org chart from 3rd-6th is the primary concept, but it now scales on the number of points you're using, and has the additional restriction of percentages. No more 2x30point gretchin units to have minimum troops, no more ignoring 'troops' in favour of elites by picking terminators without any regular marines. Is it perfect? No, but it's better than what went before if you ask me.

Warhammer Fantasy had an alternate solution of core/heroes/special/rare. This might also be worth consideration for 40k. See, the problem in my mind is that the Force Organisation Chart/Combined Arms Detachment that we all love to hate is perfect... for representing a space marine battle company, but not for much else. 6 troops = 6 tactical squads, 2 HQ = Captain and chaplain, 3 fast attack = 2 assault squads and 1 support unit, 3 heavy support = 2 devastator squads and one tank, 3 elite = 2 company dreadnoughts and 1 support unit. It's the double demi company or the strike force, but with more flexibility. Then we look at Eldar (particularly 3rd edition Eldar) and it makes no sense at all. Guardian's aren't standard soldiers, they're conscripts. Aspect warriors are soldiers, but you're heavily restricted in how many you can take. Ack! Also, what happened to my units of 3-7? They all became 5-10. Why? As far as I can tell it was because 3 units of 3-7 aspect warriors is not enough to be of any real use. 3 elites with most aspect warriors being elite just doesn't make sense.
If anything I feel that to make the FOC work for Eldar, you need to use the Beil-Tan options from the Craftworld Eldar supplement. Treat guardians as elite and all aspects as troops. Far better to come up with a FOC for each codex and not shoehorn everything into hq/troops/elite/fast/heavy. However that takes more time and effort.

 don_mondo wrote:
Ahhh, the good old days of 2nd ed...

When were those exactly?

I'm going first. My whole army goes on Overwatch, your turn.

Oh, your 170 point Farseer single-handedly killed my entire 2000 point army. Good game.

I hit your Terminator Armored, Combat Drugged, daemoned up Chaos Lord with a Hand Flamer, a weapon that literally can't cause him any damage ever, now he can no longer take any actions unless you can roll a 6 on a d6.

Turn 1 Pulsa Rocket your whole army, skip your entire turn.
Turn 2 Pulsa Rocket your whole army, skip your entire turn.
Turn 3 Pulsa Rocket your whole army, skip your entire turn.
Turn 4 Pulsa Rocket your whole army, skip your entire turn.
Looks like I win.

Not so fast, I'm playing Tyranids, your whole army died before we even set up.

You're playing anything but Space Marines? Ok, I spent 50 points and killed your entire army.
You're playing anything but Space Marines? Ok, I just happened to get the right tactical card and spend no points and killed your entire army.

Zustiur wrote:
If overwatch were to be kept, being allowed to declare it at any point in the movement phase would go a long way towards speeding things up. Also, when you resolved the shots in your opponent's turn you did so in their movement phase.

While I think the original 2nd ed rules did specify that overwatch was resolved in the movement phase, this was later changed to allow resolving it basically whenever you wanted to. This allowed you to make use of overwatch if, say, close combat casualties suddenly made a potential target become available, which was quite handy.

The main problem with 2nd ed overwatch for me was that there wasn't really any reason to not do it. If you don't have any decent targets, just put everything in overwatch and wait for your opponent to move. This resulted in more than one game where both players were just sitting on opposite sides of the board each waiting for the other to do something, while the turn counter ticked away on its own.

While I prefer the 2nd ed system to the current one, I think if it were up to me I would merge the two (take 2nd ed's requirement to declare overwatch instead of normal shooting and/or movement, add 6th ed's firing overwatch as snap shots) but also require a leadership test for a unit in overwatch wishing to shoot.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarknessEternal wrote:

You're playing anything but Space Marines? Ok, I just happened to get the right tactical card and spend no points and killed your entire army.

This one at least was fixed, with an FAQ in White Dwarf telling players to take the Virus Outbreak Strategy Card out and tear it up...

Zustiur wrote:

Infantry, and indeed all models, had fire arcs. For a really small scale game this makes sense. For a miniatures game where the models have dynamic poses it makes no sense at all. Which way is the model facing? The way its head is pointing or the way its gun is pointing? What about the other gun in the off-hand? Did I mention that you had to do your pivoting in the movement phase, so not only the position of the model was important but you had to make sure everyone was facing just the right way. I'm so glad this went away.

It was a game intended for smaller forces. If you're looking at an army of 20 vs. an army of 20, and you're telling the story of an intimate shootout between a couple of buildings the fire arcs worked pretty well. It all depends on the granularity of game you're trying to achieve. It also meant that you could outflank a squad on overwatch, which was kinda neat. (In practice I always felt that movement was too slow for infantry to do this, but it was pretty easy for Bikes and Vehicles.)

You say it's bad, which is fine, but maybe some more context to say why you felt it was bad would help? Firing arcs in the current game where I run 70+ marines would be tedious as ****, but in a small game (Necromunda, Infinity) they're a key part of the game. 2nd Ed. existed in the space between the two.

Zustiur wrote:
Far better to come up with a FOC for each codex and not shoehorn everything into hq/troops/elite/fast/heavy. However that takes more time and effort.

IMO that's where the Macro Formations shine. They do just what you describe, but at the same time don't stop you from doing something more free form if you want.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

I hit your Terminator Armored, Combat Drugged, daemoned up Chaos Lord with a Hand Flamer, a weapon that literally can't cause him any damage ever, now he can no longer take any actions unless you can roll a 6 on a d6.

If you're referring to setting someone on fire, Terminator Armor allowed you to ignore the effects. Exarch armor didn't though! I burned a lot of Exarchs.

Man, a lot of people really lost a lot of games to Tyranids in this thread. Lol

I loved 2nd edition and was completely pissed when 3rd came out. Our entire gaming group dissolved. Then when the Eldar codex came out I was back in.