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Vaccine squig. Duh.

First up 40k 2nd edition is a lot of fun as long as you don't abuse the rules just like pretty much any other version of 40k

My general tips would be:
- Remove the virus outbreak and virus grenade cards (Andy Chambers himself said in White Dwarf to rip them up)
- 50% troop choice (not 25%)
- 750-1500 Points.
- No vehicle upgrade cards to start with (enough rules for them without additional stuff).
- No wargear card can be taken in multiples.
- Use the mission cards and deal them at random.
- Put down loads of terrain, when you think you have enough put down some more. (otherwise those Dark Reapers, Deathskull Looters, Cyclone Missile Laucnhers, Tanks and other gun lines will have a field day)

General Army specific tips:
- Don't allow anything from the Inquisitor/Grey Knights section they are all ridiculous and easily abused.
- Assassins should only be from the temples not the one in the black codex.
- Don't use pop-up attacks for Skimmers (Mostly Eldar vehicles)
- Use common sense or a WYSIWYG when equipping troops and characters.
- Tyranids have to take a Hive Tyrant as there leader, which is a bit unfair in 1000 or less 2nd edition battles. (Our workaround for this is use one Tyranid Warrior but allow it 3 upgrades as the leader)

I'd suggest starting with a something simple like this as two armies:

Space Marines Army - 750 Points

Space Marine Hero
Power axe, Boltpistol,
Frag Grenades
WG 1- Bionic Eye
WG 2- Conversion Field" 78

Space Marine Codicier (lvl 2 Mastery)
Bolt Pistol , Frag Grenades
WG 1-Force Rod
WG 2-Bionic Arm" 117

Terminators x 5
Storm Bolters x4
Power Fists x 3
Chain Fist x 1
Power Sword x1
Assault Cannon x 1" 358

Tactical Squad x5
Boltguns, Frag Grenades
Missile Laucher (Frag & Krak)
Chainsword & Boltpistol" 197

vs

Ork Army - 750 Points

Ork Bigboss
Mega Armour, Power Fist, Bolt Pistol
WG 1- Kustom Shoota
WG 2- Spike Arm" 95

Wierdboy & Two minderz
WG 1-Aegis Suit" 103

Ork Mekanik
Bolt Pistol
Kustom Blasta" 48

Drillboss
Jump Pack,
Boltpistol & Axe" 26

Stormboyz x5
Jump Packs" 80

Goff Orks x 10
Chainsword
Heavy Plasma Gun" 148

Gretchin x 10
Autoguns 50

Ork warbuggy
Multimelta 65

Ork Warbike x3 135

 More Dakka wrote:
What armies are you planing to play? I have experience with most of them if you're looking for a balanced game with your opponent.

I'm looking to give Chaos Space Marines/Cultists a test run. In particular, I'm curious to see how Dreadnoughts perform, given their options to take Combi-Weapons and Autolaunchers. Given CSM don't get Techmarines, they can't do a "tanker" army like Loyalists but I imagine that such armies are still fairly gimmicky either way.

On a sidenote, since Bikes are vehicles, does this mean Imperial Bikes could each mount a Hunter Killer Missile on them?

 Insectum7 wrote:
Start off with basic units until you get the feel of it.

DON'T start off with Wolfguard Terminators all with Assault Cannons, Ork armies with 6 Pulsa Rokkits, or and Eldar player who spends their entire 50% Character points allotment on Exarchs.

I played very cassualy back in the day in 2nd editon. I was a kid then. I remember I had an excharch though.

Perhaps this explains why my oponent lost so much.

 Elbows wrote:
Oddly the maneuver wasn't really that limited. It's just limited to the silliness that 40K has become (one of the only major wargames where a squad can run up and down the field numerous times). People expecting to charge Space Marines on foot across the board...well that doesn't work.

Vehicles moved far faster than they ever have since - it was the point of taking vehicles. Jump Packs moved far faster and deep striking or infiltrating was rare and vastly more important.

Rhinos could also carry Dreadnoughts and even Terminators depending on the datafax you used - meaning everyone could get somewhere if the vehicle wasn't sniped (always a chance of course).

Weapons also had much longer ranges (heavy weapons shooting up to 60-72" frequently). This all just punished anybody who wanted to try to foot slog infantry across a board to get into assault (which is a silly idea to start with).

You actually needed to make use of transports, bikes, mobility units if you wanted to zip around the enemies deployment zone.

Transport vehicles were useless - they were trivial to kill and dangerous for the embarked models. Bikes were death traps for characters and delivering characters into combat is how you won games. Neither of these represents anything close to a reliable strategy.

I played Necrons in 2nd ed, and i thought I was hot gak because necrons would make enemy models miss the more necrons models you had close to them.

Until I ran into my friend's warp spiders, that wounded versus my initiative.... which was a 2...... tabling me in one turn of warping across the table, and obliterating me.

Also, ork turkks with giant nets so you could transport 100 orks across the board lol

Didn't Battle Wagons have a rule that you could transport as many Orks as you could physically balance on the model?

PS: Chaos Dreadnoughts were amazing with the Scourge weapon. In fact, it was the *literally* only thing I missed in the transition from 2nd to 3rd. Well, technically I also missed Terminator Saves on 2 dice, but that was only because I thought Chaos Terminators were the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I genuinely started playing 40k because the Chaos Terminator with Reaper Autocannon was advertised as being released in a White Dwarf. So if anyone wants to date my entry to 40k, it was the month after that release.

Terminators, a Reaper AC Termie, Abbadon, the Chaos Dread [with Scourge and Plasma Cannon!] and a unit of Berzerkers, is how I started playing. I tried out all kinds of paint schemes on those poor [individual] Terminators. The Khorne one looked pretty good, and the Night Lord Reaper was probably my favourite.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 MarsNZ wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

It was a boring edition where half your army stood and fired uselessly (unless you got lucky on the rolls) and the other half trudged slowly towards the enemy.

Meanwhile your teleporting librarian is killing six guys a turn.

Oh so a complete contrast to every edition since. Good angle.

You mean compared to editions where you have a useful amount of mobility? Yes. Maneuver was incredibly limited in 2nd.

I'm starting to wonder if you ever even played 2nd. From 3rd edition till the present a regular ground based vehicle simply doubles the units movement. Vehicles (including bikes and also jump packs) are slower now than they were in the mid 1990s. Of course shifting the goalposts to a new argument when your previous position has been completely debunked is always a nice move.

Man, I miss 2nd ed. I'll grant I was like age 12-14, during that edition, so my strategy was probably fairly weak, but a few things I recall:

-Dark Millennium psychic phase was awesome. Imbalanced if you pulled the good powers, but it was so much better than most 40K psychic phases since.

-Vehicles were death traps.

-Genestealers were insanely good if you made the mistake I did of playing with all those walls you got in the 2nd ed box. Their 12" movement coupled with walls and distance made my Marines hit them on 6s or 6s followed by a 4+. Then in CC they were unhittable and had the strength to rip apart tanks.

-Characters in CC were devastating cause the lesser opponent never struck back and the ability to add d10s and d20s for armor pen made even tanks and bunkers unsafe.

-Assault Cannons would wreck everything targeted!...And then be jammed for the rest of the game.

-Overwatch.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BuFFo wrote:
I played Necrons in 2nd ed, and i thought I was hot gak because necrons would make enemy models miss the more necrons models you had close to them.

Until I ran into my friend's warp spiders, that wounded versus my initiative.... which was a 2...... tabling me in one turn of warping across the table, and obliterating me.

Also, ork turkks with giant nets so you could transport 100 orks across the board lol

Oh yeah, haha, that was the edition where Warp Spiders had templates, armor pen, a shot that could devastate most troops, and could teleport after shooting. They were so disappointing in 3rd+ after that intro. I had a 2nd ed Eldar army that was like just Spiders, jet bikes, a few Dark Reapers, a Falcon, and Vypers to popup Cannon shots or carry Farseers. Then 3rd ed rendered it unusable cause I had nothing classified as troops anymore.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

 More Dakka wrote:
What armies are you planing to play? I have experience with most of them if you're looking for a balanced game with your opponent.

I'm looking to give Chaos Space Marines/Cultists a test run. In particular, I'm curious to see how Dreadnoughts perform, given their options to take Combi-Weapons and Autolaunchers. Given CSM don't get Techmarines, they can't do a "tanker" army like Loyalists but I imagine that such armies are still fairly gimmicky either way.

On a sidenote, since Bikes are vehicles, does this mean Imperial Bikes could each mount a Hunter Killer Missile on them?

The rules state no vehicle can have the same modification, Hunter Killer Missiles are actually not allowed on bikes according to the card itself. SO you could have a rhino with a HKM but not 2 rhinos with them.

Chaos are great in 2nd edition, lots of options in the space marine/daemon list and then the cultist and daemon world army lists have even more options from Beastmen to Trolls.

You couldn't have two vehicles with the same combination of vehicle cards (as they were to represent field mods, not factory variants); you could have two Rhinos with HKMs, but one of them would need to have another card, too.

Not sure if any army could do an all-tanks force (you'd need to spend at least 25% of your points on troops in transports, at least).

 MarsNZ wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 MarsNZ wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

It was a boring edition where half your army stood and fired uselessly (unless you got lucky on the rolls) and the other half trudged slowly towards the enemy.

Meanwhile your teleporting librarian is killing six guys a turn.

Oh so a complete contrast to every edition since. Good angle.

You mean compared to editions where you have a useful amount of mobility? Yes. Maneuver was incredibly limited in 2nd.

I'm starting to wonder if you ever even played 2nd. From 3rd edition till the present a regular ground based vehicle simply doubles the units movement. Vehicles (including bikes and also jump packs) are slower now than they were in the mid 1990s. Of course shifting the goalposts to a new argument when your previous position has been completely debunked is always a nice move.

I'll repeat myself - vehicles did not increase mobility because they were trivial to kill and dangerous for characters inside. Bikes were a deathtrap for characters. Neither is a reliable strategy and any good army list will use neither of these.

Not to mention most vehicles could only make 1-2 45 degree turns in their whole 20" move, so they were like modern fliers but got blocked by any terrain.

YOU could put Reinforced Armor, Dozer Blades, Ablative Armor and even Ceramite Armor on vehicles to make them more resilient. Eldar had Holofields and a laser reducer wargear card.

Anyways the WD article suggested 2 tactics: One was to load up the point vehicle with all the super wargear to keep it alive and then the other vehicles would follow behind the spearhead until it was destroyed.
The other was to have so many screening vehicles like cheap rhinos or bikes that would have to be killed off before your good vehicles were allowed to be targeted.

good luck

 MagicJuggler wrote:
On a sidenote, since Bikes are vehicles, does this mean Imperial Bikes could each mount a Hunter Killer Missile on them?

I can't remember for sure, but I vaguely recall that there was a restriction on walkers, bikes and skimmers access to taking certain vehicle cards - it's been so long! Of interest is that there is no upper limit to the quantity of vehicle cards that can be applied to a singular model, so go nuts on 10+ HK missiles on a bare rhino..

Here's some general 2nd ed advice dredged up from at least 18 year old memories of when I last had a game...

Start small and weird to get to grips with the rule types that just don't exist anymore, in particular psychology - Ork madboys would be a good casestudy. Once you are familiar, 1,500 points is a good game size (for scale reference, typical space marine force would consist of a couple of characters, 3 well equipped squads and a couple of vehicles at this level).

Transports are death traps, except for the razorback which didn't include a "all passengers die" line on its datacard (funny what you remember).

Bikes are death traps, for the uninitiated they were a paper thin vehicle and hits were randomly allocated between rider and mount, unlike the aforementioned razorback they did have the "all passengers die" option.

Hand to hand is nothing like 3rd onwards. Having lots of attack dice is as much a hindrance as it is a boon (fumble on every 1, critical on every 6 after the 1st) - a high weapon skill, a trusty sword and modifiers stacked in your favour is the path to victory (and for star wars fans, having the high ground counts )

Ruin friendships by throwing frag grenades, and then acknowledge that GW was right to restrict one grenade per squad.

Ork Bikes were excellent in 2nd edition, mainly because they were cheap and had twin linked autocannons.

Not as amusing as 1st edition, though; where their autocannon hit everything in a 2" corridor ahead of the bike - but the bike rotated up to 45degrees to the left or right - determined randomly after declaring the shot, but before determining any hits.

I tended to use bikes as ambushers on flanks; they had good speed, so they could zoom up the sides of the board and ambush artillery or heavy weapon squads, and hopefully could keep in cover so they didn't get shot up.

2nd was a bit of a mess unfortunately. Simple things like moving jump pack troops takes about 5 minutes because you need to roll scatter for everyone. Vehicles were pretty bad, transport vehicles doubly so, leading to the aforementioned lack of mobility. Sure, they could be fast, but moving them was overly complicated. Maybe it's a good thing they were pretty fragile.

Then there was the always-delightful "template phase" where you had to roll for each and every cloud of gas/smoke/dimensional tear to see what happened to it. Ah, how I loved that tedium.

Close combat was a mess too if it involved more than 2-3 models a side. Probably the worst experience I've had playing any edition of 40k was resolving a combat between a Death Company unit and a squad of Chaos Terminators.

I think the best thing I can say about 2nd edition was it provided an excellent basis for the Necromunda rules. I think if you tried to play it now you'd be adding so many house rules and caveats I'd question whether it's worth it when the fundamentals just aren't all that great.

And yes, the Battlewagon did indeed have a transport capacity of "however many models will fit" with rules for what happened if models fell off as you were moving it. It's funny and characterful but ultimately got very annoying very quickly.

Now this only works if you are playing Imperial Guard (not Astra Militarum) but it helps with the mobility issue. You need a Chimera, five Ogryns, and a Commisar (Ogryns won't get in Chimera without a Commisar). You take a single wound automatically with no save for getting out of a vehicle at top speed but Ogryns have three so not much of an issue. You have the Chimera shoot down the field on turn one, have the Ogryns pop out, take a wound, then unload 10 sustained fire dice worth of Ogryn sized shotgun at the enemy. Your opponent will laugh and congratulate you on such creativity.

That reminds me of "Orky Unlimber" - the only race able to unlimber artillery pieces from vehicles freely whilst moving --- they just scattered and bounced around the field when you did so.

2nd is still my favorite edition! But, there are a few things to keep in mind.

Without a comp pack thicker than the rulebook, it would be a very difficult edition to play competitively. The sheer wealth of options, some under- and some over-powered, make it very hard to feel like the game is balanced.

But, it is an edition that rewards "narrative" play mightily, as it creates so many stories as you play. A random example - an ork buggy shoots a plasma cannon at a rhino, blows off the track, and the Rhino pitches into the air, only to land on the buggy, crushing the buggy's gunner. Ork weapons in general are great fun in 2nd edition, killing as many orks as enemies most of the time.

So, I would recommend playing very vanilla storyline armies - lots of tactical marines versus lots of orks. Include dreadnoughts and tanks like you were 15 years old and had to ask mum for one. (IE: bring few) Have fun with logical and wonderful things that have since been streamlines out of the game, like firing bolters at the enemies stuck in close combat with your dreadnought. Sure, you randomize the hits, but the bolter rounds just plink off the dreads hull. (And you can imagine him declaring "Brothers, verily, scratch my back!" before you do it)

I hope it goes well, be sure to post some battle reports of your games - 2nd ed tends to make for good stories.

2nd edition should simply not be played with the all-too-common tournament mentality that has polluted the 40K community. They state in the rulebook that's not the purpose. They elaborate quite readily in various White Dwarf articles and rulebooks that it is first and foremost a game about fun. The editor columns frequently deride questions asked by power gamers, even then. While it's the most narrative and characterful version of Warhammer 40K, it's probably the most easy to break if you decide to be a dick.

Luckily the people who still play 2nd are far from tournament players for the most part. Get a rulebook cheap on eBay and read it thoroughly and then decide if it's a game for you. I suspect it may not be since the first question asked was about mounting hunter-killer missiles to your bikes.

The codices from that generation are amongst the best ever put out by GW and really provide a crazy amount of information on any of those races/armies (they should be considered primers for any current players).

Oggthrok wrote:

So, I would recommend playing very vanilla storyline armies - lots of tactical marines versus lots of orks.

But remember, a lot of orks in 2nd edition was five squads of ten guys. And since they have BS3, feel free to keep your distance and shoot with Boyz, if you feel like it.