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 Vaktathi wrote:
The "oh look the area terrain and CC consolidation rules mean nobody ever gets to shoot me!" issues were pretty abusive too (was on both sides of that, my CSM's loved it, but made IG unplayable). 4E had some major core rules problems sadly.

Funny, we had a local IG guy go 36 consecutive wins. It was really hard to take all the IG moaners seriously. Of all the armies, I think it always had the largest discrepancy between its power level and its players' capacity to use it.
And yes, that counts the Eldar whingefest that lasted from 3rd to 6th.

I started playing in RT but when they squatted my Squats I said seeyalater. tried to come back in 5th said nothanks. wanted to come back tail end of 7th and looked at rules and didn't, but when 8th dropped and looked over the game said hell yeah.

I still voted for RT, but 8th has sold me thru and thru. I wish there was a little more RPG in it but I'm very happy with it so far.

8th is the best so far.

7th had potential to be even better, but it was destroyed by a handful of things that were OP, or pointless. had 7th been balanced better, it would have been the best.

 Vaktathi wrote:
while 4th had a lot less escalation than what followed, and the codex books had lots of flavor, the rules and codex books (the 3.5/4E IG codex is simultaneously lauded as both one of the fluffiest and weakest/least competitive codex books ever) were pretty wildly imbalanced and had some really obvious sore spots. Particularly with vehicles and LoS/CC consolidation and a couple other things. Nonskimmer transports were simply flat out nonfunctional for instance (any single penetrating hit auto-disembarked the unit and forced a pinning test, on top of autostunning the tank for a turn even if it survived, pens killed on a 4+, none of which applied to skimmers that could only ever be glanced and seemingly all had cheap wargear options tailored to mitigating or ignoring the danger of dying on an immobilized result which was supposed to be the downside to SMF). The "oh look the area terrain and CC consolidation rules mean nobody ever gets to shoot me!" issues were pretty abusive too (was on both sides of that, my CSM's loved it, but made IG unplayable). 4E had some major core rules problems sadly.

Tranports were brutal in 4th, to be sure. But how nice it was to deploy and see lots of infantry. My memory of 5th is just rows of vehicles lined up against each other. Bleh. Aside from a few quibbles, the rules for 5th were ok, but the actual manifestation was bland.

I also seem to recall 5th introducing the simplified kill points victories, which was also really unfortunate..

I’m partial to 3rd, but recognize that there is a serious amount of rose colored nostalgia tinting that vote.

Every edition has had flaws, some worse then others. Depends a lot on what you think is broken. I prefer the older terrain rules and simpler wound allocation. 5th was probably the tightest ruleset, but I didn’t like the way in handled those things.

I’m feeling good about 8th, but it’s still young. I think they might have gone a little too far with the simplification, but overall think it’s in the right place.

I started in 5th, and 5th was better than what came after it, but 8th is considerably better. However, at that time the only thing that actually concerned me was vehicle hull points, which I still don't appreciate.

I do miss detailed vehicle rules, but that doesn't make or break the game for me.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The "oh look the area terrain and CC consolidation rules mean nobody ever gets to shoot me!" issues were pretty abusive too (was on both sides of that, my CSM's loved it, but made IG unplayable). 4E had some major core rules problems sadly.

Funny, we had a local IG guy go 36 consecutive wins. It was really hard to take all the IG moaners seriously. Of all the armies, I think it always had the largest discrepancy between its power level and its players' capacity to use it.
And yes, that counts the Eldar whingefest that lasted from 3rd to 6th.

I can't speak to your gaming group, but from my anecdotal experience, and 4E tournament results, IG were not a particularly great army, and there's several fairly obvious reasons why.

First is the infantry. While the costs of many units in many books has fluctuated over time, rarely do we see them as volatile as we have with IG infantry, who's performance has otherwise remained largely identical, but you compare an 8E Cadian infantry unit with a special and heavy weapon to a 4E Cadian doctrine infantry unit with a heavy and special weapon and vet serg, and the 4E unit is literally twice the price (and with no Orders of any kind, no Combined squads gimmicks, etc), whereas most other similar units like Tac Marines, Boyz, Guardians/Avengers, have remained within a relatively tight range, usually 20-25%, even with changes in abilities. A Tac squad in 4E costs...about the same as one in 8E. Avengers went up something like 40% in the index and that almost killed them entirely, imagine if they were twice as much . IG infantry prices were insanely inflated in 4E, costing half again or double as much after kit as in subsequent editions, a much higher rate of change than most other such units. One will notice most of the other 4E IG codex units, particularly the tanks, remain broadly within the same 20-25% range depending on kit throughout the subsequent editions, but not the infantry, they drop like a rock after 4E.

Issues were rife with tanks like the Leman Russ being completely unable to fire their hull and sponson weapons if the turret weapon fired (Thanks 4E Ordnance rules!) and couldn't hit squat if they moved (again...thanks 4E ordnance rules!), Hellhounds having to roll to hit with their flame template, Basilisks having to buy their indirect fire upgrade and being stuck with a minimum range of 36" (so you couldn't hit anything on your own side of the table), etc. Then there was the 4E vehicle damage rules, where they were very easy to keep from shooting and moving (same with 5E in most ways) but more importantly the damage table made it trivial to cripple or kill them, particularly the way penetrating hits worked, while stuff that's now basic kit like Smoke Launchers had to be purchased (and could only downgrade a penetrating hit to a glancing hit), etc. The transport rules didn't help either. On top of transports being very deadly to occupants if destroyed, if they were simply penetrated (D6+ S Exceeds AV, Skimmers can skip this section) the unit inside was immediately forced to disembark and take a pinning test, so Chimeras didn't function at all as anything but very expensive light tanks.

The support options didn't help either, Officers just basically let other units use their Ld but it was usually the same or only 1pt higher (8 vs 7 in most cases). Commissars still had Summary Execution, but they were 40pts (being attached to an 80-120pt squad), could only do their thing to one squad (no aura ability), and they killed off the most expensive model in the unit to auto-pass a morale test. The sanctioned psyker was basically pointless (you could get lucky and roll a 6 for a...heavy D6 lasgun...woo!) and could literally just roll a 1 when rolling its power and end up with no power at all

As a result, tanks were fragile and had their firepower hamstrung by wonky rules, the infantry were absurdly expensive, the core rules made Chimera transports pointless deathtraps, nothing had any mobility, the support options added little or nothing of value, and the army broadly didn't do particularly well.

And that's not even getting into issues with CC and terrain and the like. You had the odd gimmick like Drop Troops that sometimes pulled out a tournament placing, but even that was heavily reliant on a good dose of luck and not flubbing reserve and deep strike rolls.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
while 4th had a lot less escalation than what followed, and the codex books had lots of flavor, the rules and codex books (the 3.5/4E IG codex is simultaneously lauded as both one of the fluffiest and weakest/least competitive codex books ever) were pretty wildly imbalanced and had some really obvious sore spots. Particularly with vehicles and LoS/CC consolidation and a couple other things. Nonskimmer transports were simply flat out nonfunctional for instance (any single penetrating hit auto-disembarked the unit and forced a pinning test, on top of autostunning the tank for a turn even if it survived, pens killed on a 4+, none of which applied to skimmers that could only ever be glanced and seemingly all had cheap wargear options tailored to mitigating or ignoring the danger of dying on an immobilized result which was supposed to be the downside to SMF). The "oh look the area terrain and CC consolidation rules mean nobody ever gets to shoot me!" issues were pretty abusive too (was on both sides of that, my CSM's loved it, but made IG unplayable). 4E had some major core rules problems sadly.

Tranports were brutal in 4th, to be sure. But how nice it was to deploy and see lots of infantry. My memory of 5th is just rows of vehicles lined up against each other. Bleh. Aside from a few quibbles, the rules for 5th were ok, but the actual manifestation was bland.

I also seem to recall 5th introducing the simplified kill points victories, which was also really unfortunate..

I totally agree about Kill Points, and that's one of my deepest hatreds for 5E. As for the vehicles thing, coming from 4E it was nice that they were actually functional and could be used In some ways I feel 8E has shifted back toward 4th, the transports (especially the Chimera) are just way too expensive to take for most infantry units and don't offer enough on their own to be worthwhile, exceptions for things like Elysians and Taurox Primes and whatnot, though you do get more mixed infantry/tank armies in general than the extremes of 4th and 5th of all one or the other.

I never ran transports in 4th edition. My zerkers ran out screaming if they "berzerked". Then in 5th they canned that whole fluff schtick. So it forced me to buy rhinos. Which sucked since vehicle warfare was real.

Played editions 3-8. I honestly have always been perplexed by the love for 5th, but I suppose it was just the armies played in my area. It was just parking lots on either side - no one moved. Nothing happened, but every meta is different. Anyways, I am enjoying 8th the most. I have 6ish armies, so I am just playing with the ones that have codices and its been a blast. The best part is that armies can actually be played in multiple ways to greater degree than any version since 4th (if i'm remembering 4th correctly).

Played mostly 5th, 6th made things weird imo then got back into 40k properly during 7th. Which just became so bloated it's indescribable.

Although, i rather like the 8th ruleset. Only real issue is i feel the vehicles got dumbed down, i liked them being separate profiles from infantry. made them feel unique.

Terrain seems less important now, but it still doesn't hurt to use it.

Lastly, with my own eyes this is the most balanced I've seen 40k though thus far, needless to say that makes it a winner in my eyes.

Before 8th, prior to fliers, which broke the ever loving hell out of it, 5th was the best in spite of all its flaws (and it had some pretty huge ones).

That said, 8th has laid some really solid groundwork, and I hope that GW takes it down the right path. I think it's too early to say where 8th stands yet, but with any luck it'll definitely be up there. That said, there's so much that GW's managed to mess up already, and so many directions it could go in that will cause it to meet the same pitfalls that editions before it met. Still, the core systems are the best we've seen yet, so I'm trying to stay optimistic.

In a perfect world, we'd have a combination of the best features of 5th and 8th (and hopefully we'll see 8th evolve into that over time).

Started in 5th, and I'm torn about it. Part of me loved it but then again part of me can't help but wonder if people were playing the same 5th I did. Space Wolves alone were BS and were incredibly unfun to play against, and when Grey Knights came out half the people in my area switched to them overnight. The game heavily favored mechanized infantry and if you didn't bring as much melta as humanly possible you may as well pack up. Not to mention the shenanigans biker nobs and other units could pull.

But then again, 5th was one of my favorite guard codexes, my beloved powerblobs, chenkov, vets, etc.

I still think 8th is shaping up to be a better edition, but just barely, and obviously it's not quite done yet. 8th desperately needs actually interesting rules for terrain, still has missions with killpoints when we have a ready made power level system we could use to tally up a lost unit's worth, and in general just has way too much stuff on the table for a 28mm wargame to allow real tactics and maneuvering.

40k desperately needs either bigger tables or smaller armies. I totally get everyone wanting a table to look like a codex cover chock full of models but it takes a lot of depth out of the game and basically ensures that only certain army types can flourish. IG for example are so powerful in 8th in part because there really isn't any way to flank us, drop in behind us, or you know, maneuver. It doesn't matter if the IG player has a slow to move army or can't redeploy very quickly, because at the pts levels people like to play at (2000pts for example) I have a hard enough time just fitting my army into my deployment zone, let alone worrying about a weak flank or something. To put it in perspective, I've had more infantry and tanks in my IG army than I've had in some of my Flames of War armies, which are at 15mm scale for a company level game. That's insane, and Flames of War tables get packed enough as is.

Don't get me wrong, I love 40k as a casual game and an excuse to play in the 40k setting. It does a decent job capturing that feeling of what a 40k game should feel like and at least isn't an absolute chore to play like 7th, but it is not perfect. To this day I do not understand how people derive any enjoyment from high level competitive 40k play in tournaments, as it tends to promote a level of rules lawyering and... creative... rules interpretations that is just awful to deal with. In my opinion 40k just has far too many variables to ever be 100% balanced at that level of play, and I just don't know if GW will ever be capable of getting it tight enough to make tournament play a serious consideration. Heck I don't think anyone is capable of it. At least GW is clearly trying to make the changes necessary, far more than it ever has in my memory. The sheer amount of balance tweaks and listening to their fans is proof of that. While its not perfect and can often be a bit too harsh (RIP commissars) you can tell they're at least trying and with all the tweaks I actually have a small amount of hope that they'll get around to buffing these units back up a bit once the release schedule calms down. I would've never said that for pre-8th GW.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

40k desperately needs either bigger tables or smaller armies.

This, this, a thousand times, this. Bring back Apocalypse as a legitimate format, and redevelop 40k as the more intimate game that its designers clearly want it to be in spite of the scale they are constantly roped into. Power levels are a great start for developing an Apocalypse-format expansion. Abstract unit abilities by a bit, and create big spectacle games that can be played at a pace slightly faster than the speed of slow. In addition to that, smaller scale games are generally easier to balance, and not nearly as much attention needs to be paid to Apocalypse-scale balance, since no one really tries to win or lose those ones so much as they do blow everything up.

Now, I don't particularly care for Apocalypse. But I know it has a place (that place usually involving several drinks to get through) and an audience. And it shouldn't be wedged into a core game that does not scale well into it, and vice versa.

I started way back when dinosaurs ruled the earth (Rogue Trader) and the best edition of 40k is always the next one

 Vaktathi wrote:
Still not sure I can render judgement on 8th.

Outside of that, 5th was probably the best, though still deeply flawed in many ways and by no means perfect, but probably the easiest to fix. I keep wanting to like 4th...but it had too many core systemic rules issues, though the 4E book itself is probably one of the best reads.

7th was the worst. An incomprehensible mess of randomness for its own sake, nakedly marketing driven rules (buy our exclusive web bundle and get these insanely broken rules for free!), inconsistent design philosophies, lazy rules writing, awful fluff, and eight gajillion rules sources that would have cost several thousand dollars to actually acquire in total.

This. 5th was the best edition, though hardly perfect. 7th is easily the shittiest edition 40K has ever had, and the proof is in the fact that people who defend it can only do so with the stipulation of "w-well if you ignore the formations and the codices...!"

I personally enjoyed 6th the most though, if only because it's the edition I got the most games in with. It certainly helped that Daemons were also my primary army at the time as well.

I voted 3rd, simply as that was the edition I had most of my games before life, work, wife and family happened and I couldn't juggle everything.

Out of the games I had, they all were pretty good (except for some outline silly ones)

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Still not sure I can render judgement on 8th.

Outside of that, 5th was probably the best, though still deeply flawed in many ways and by no means perfect, but probably the easiest to fix. I keep wanting to like 4th...but it had too many core systemic rules issues, though the 4E book itself is probably one of the best reads.

7th was the worst. An incomprehensible mess of randomness for its own sake, nakedly marketing driven rules (buy our exclusive web bundle and get these insanely broken rules for free!), inconsistent design philosophies, lazy rules writing, awful fluff, and eight gajillion rules sources that would have cost several thousand dollars to actually acquire in total.

This. 5th was the best edition, though hardly perfect. 7th is easily the shittiest edition 40K has ever had, and the proof is in the fact that people who defend it can only do so with the stipulation of "w-well if you ignore the formations and the codices...!"

I personally enjoyed 6th the most though, if only because it's the edition I got the most games in with. It certainly helped that Daemons were also my primary army at the time as well.

According to the poll, 6th is the shittiest edition 40k ever had

started with rogue trader, played them all. My favorite is 3rd, the only 1 I actually hate is 8th, it ended 40k for me more or less (still play 3rd and 7th HH)

I'm enjoying 8th, but it is too early to pass judgement on the edition just yet.

My favorite time in 40 k was early 6th (prior to most 6th ed codex releases, up through maybe the CSM/DA releases). After that the codex escalation of Daemons, Tau, Eldar really started, then knights added super heavies to the game, so the edition as a whole ended up a mess, which continued in 7th, and I stopped playing much at that point. I liked 5th, but again by the end of that edition things were similarly a mess, just not quite as big a one as later editions (GK were too powerful).

7th edition, by far.

I started in 3rd and was disgusted by the game being an ork, and I was only interested in the hobby part. I skipped 4th edition completely, the game I mean, since at that time I was only a painter and not a gamer. I like 5th edition and completely missed 6th, I quit the hobby at that time. Came back in 7th and loved the Haemy coven and some of the new SW models (wulfen and thunderwolves) so I decided to collect two other armies!

Then arrived this edition. IMHO the worst. It's probably because my armies don't have a codex yet but this edition basically killed more than half of my collection. And it's a shame since I think the core rules are the best of all times. But orks and druklhari were more fun to play in 7th edition IMHO and also SW can't really rely on the units I love which were amazing in the previous edition.

I also can't stand the concept of superheroes and centerpiece models, which is one the key points of 40k now.

So until orks, SW and drukhari don't get a codex, and a codex that makes at least 2/3 of their catalogue viable, 8th edition is very bad and utterly unbalanced in my opinion.

I like 8th best, with 2nd coming second

One of the issues with 2nd is that's it's only really doable as a skirmish game. We once did a tank battle with about a dozen imperial tanks on each side. It took us about half an hour per player turn just to resolve all that drifting smoke

3rd was good too, 4th annoyed me because my main army was unplayable. Bundled with the anual price increase and spending more time on other things I quited and came back with 6th.

I started in 7th Edition and can attest to the fact that it is definitely not the best Edition since 8th Edition has already proven itself better. 8th Edition does have it's flaws and could have been better by keeping some if the things in 7th. For example - 8th would benefit from having a To Wound chart closer to that of 7th (to be more specific - I hate that something that is S3 can still do damage to something that is T10 on a 6+ in Shooting). So I think that GW overshot a few things in 8th and needed to keep more things from 7th, but 8th is still much better as then 7thEdition (so far since every Codex is not out yet).

As for the other Editions, I don't know anything about them. So on the basis of that and the fact that I don't feel that 7th is truly complete yet, I didn't vote, but my unofficial vote is 8th Edition.

Without a doubt, 7th had the best ruleset of any of the editions 40k has had. Though Games Workshop then made some pretty stupid decisions with too many supplements, formations and power creep with new codexes. 8th is going a similar way, but with a much worse ruleset. 4th and 5th were pretty enjoyable too, but their ruleset wasn't quite as solid.

3.5 for me

The poll is slightly broken as it does not also capture which editions people have played.

I started in 1st and 3rd would be my favorite with 5th as the runner up but if I'd only started playing in 4th then my answer would be different...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Darsath wrote:
Without a doubt, 7th had the best ruleset of any of the editions 40k has had. Though Games Workshop then made some pretty stupid decisions with too many supplements, formations and power creep with new codexes. 8th is going a similar way, but with a much worse ruleset. 4th and 5th were pretty enjoyable too, but their ruleset wasn't quite as solid.

I'm curious what you thought was better about 7th vs. 5th? To my mind the two were pretty similar except that 7th broke vehicles and anti-tank weapons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

According to the poll, 6th is the shittiest edition 40k ever had

I don't think that's going to get much argument.

You mean players didn't like M-M-Mysterious Terrain?

Only if I got to do C-C-Cocaine first....

Torn between 5th (when I started playing again after old Epic way back) and 8th (probably need more time to assess). Probably going for 8th because it is ultimately faster and more intuitive, and while it replaces old stupid with new stupid, the new stupid is less prevalent.

8th has dodgy cover rules, and morale, while simple, favours small units and penalises large ones. On the other hand, a lot of needless overcomplicated stuff was cut away to simplify the game while keeping most of the tactical depth. Also I am liking the Maelstrom missions (they may have been a product of 7th, but I never played that).

Flamers hitting flyers needs looking at. And have they errata'd pistols and the like to officially work yet?

Mark.

 Scott-S6 wrote:
The poll is slightly broken as it does not also capture which editions people have played.

I started in 1st and 3rd would be my favorite with 5th as the runner up but if I'd only started playing in 4th then my answer would be different...

That's a different question though. I personally wanted to know which editions are perceived as better than 8th and quite a number of people explained why they think that way.

Obviously this does not mean that 7th is way better than rouge trader - most people have never played rouge trader and most that have are not on these boards or even in the hobby anymore.

Still, the large amount of votes for 5th is definitely surprising to me, the other results not so much.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:
The poll is slightly broken as it does not also capture which editions people have played.

I started in 1st and 3rd would be my favorite with 5th as the runner up but if I'd only started playing in 4th then my answer would be different...

That's a different question though. I personally wanted to know which editions are perceived as better than 8th and quite a number of people explained why they think that way.

Obviously this does not mean that 7th is way better than rouge trader - most people have never played rouge trader and most that have are not on these boards or even in the hobby anymore.

Still, the large amount of votes for 5th is definitely surprising to me, the other results not so much.

5th was pretty solid. It didn't have whole classes of units and weapons that were essentially useless (like 7th). Codex balance wasn't horrible and most of the codexes were interesting (6th and 4th both had a wave of deeply bland codexes)

Flyers were a problem. Melee was a weaker strategy than shooting but that's always been true. 3rd and 8th have probably been the best editions for people wanting to have (or play against) melee-focused armies.