The Newman wrote: I'm surprised this wasn't one of the first three of four comments. Is 30k actually that much better?
Just to be clear to the
OP:
Horus Heresy was an 'expansion' to
40k which used it's own army lists to set games in 30k - 10,000 years before the events of Warhammer
40k. It still exists, but while
40k has moved on to 8ed, Heresy still uses a variant of the 7ed rules. This has cause *some discussion* online that we really don't need to go over again here.
In answer to 'which is better', it really depends on what you want. There's a bit of history to understand behind the two - apologies for length:
Heresy uses the 7ed rules, which is basically 3ed
40k from 2004 with endless patches and extras rules bolted on for all the bigger and weirder units they introduced over the years. This really affects how the edition works. So, for example, they wanted to release really big tanks like the Baneblade but found that the 3ed tank rules meant they blew up too easily. So, they had to invent a separate class of 'Super-heavy vehicles' that ignore a load of the basic game rules. Ditto for super-heavy walkers (which ignore a different set of rules) and then for flyers, etc etc. The basic weapons then weren't strong enough to hurt those and, since the 3ed scale only went up to Strength 10 Damage 1, they had to invent 'Destroyer-class' to represent those bigger weapons. Ditto 'Thunderblitz' for when a big vehicle does a tank shock. The release schedule was stretched over many years, with old edition Codexes still valid until the new on was released, so it was impossible to reset the edition to take these into account - so at every point rules for new unit types were bolted on and on.
So you have an edition where there are lots and lots of rules interactions between lots of different classes of weapon and vehicle and unit type, which you could argue made it complex (in the good way) but I would say made it a bit of a slog to actually play. Lots of trying to remember which bit of the rulebook says X class ignores that specific bit of the Y phase, and a lot of weird counter-intuitive things like X giant walking robot being one class but Y identical giant robot being a completely different class with different rules. Also, a lot of the rules in 7ed were themselves exceptions to 'normal sequence of play'. So, while shooting a gun was broadly the same as 8ed, shooting a Blast weapon involved using plastic templates to see who is hit and then scattering them (and trying to agree with your opponent about which way the blast travelled) - again this is something that in the days of 3ed you'd do a couple of times a turn with the odd missile launcher, but by 7ed you might have ten of those weapons in your army.
Also, in 7ed, regular
40k started a crazy system of army-building with lots of Formations, special army-specific Detachments and bonuses, more and more of which would appear in campaign supplements and give HUGE boosts to very specific builds of armies, making the whole game even harder to balance or keep track of.
The Heresy version of 7ed kept all the basic rules the same, but opted for a much simpler army-building system and far fewer 'codexes', which made building an army was much likely to be 'fair' and the system was inherently easier to balance. However the basic game rules are the same.
8ed was the first time since 2004 that
GW have completely rebooted the game to take into account the scale to which it has grown, and it's broadly the same in intent, but feels a lot faster to play, with less reference to rules and exceptions. If you're a fan of 8ed (which I am) then this is brilliant - it feels a lot more like playing a modern skirmish-style war-game or a very complex board game and less like lining up your models and then trying to remember all the interactions in 200 pages of rules. More focused on in-game tactical choices and less of a feat of memory! It's also simplified a lot of the base rules so they inherently account for things like Strength 15 weapons and big vehicles doing more damage in assault - so that means a lot of the bolt-on systems aren't needed any more.
However, there are a fair amount of 7ed players who liked all those different bolt-on systems and argue that stuff like the Blast weapon charade or Destroyer weapons added granularity and variety. There's also the major advantage that people already knew how to play 7ed and many didn't want to have to learn a new ruleset. Also, it took quite a long time (for various unavoidable reasons) for
FW to tell the Heresy community what was going on - if Heresy was switching to 8ed or not - and in that time people's positions got quite entrenched. A lot of Heresy players valued the fact that, in 7ed, Heresy was less of a chore to play than 7ed
40k, and that was one of the main reasons they liked it more. With 8ed coming out, they prefer that system, but now find that they have to play 7ed or just switch to playing 'regular'
40k. For some people, who used to play, say, their Heresy Legion army vs their friends
40k Ork army, they basically can't play any more. That pissed some people off. On the other hand, you've got a lot of 7ed fans who dug their heels in right at the start and declared that the perceived simplification of 8ed meant that it was some sort of pointless Kiddiehammer atrocity without any depth (usually before they even played it). It's now at the level where 'THAT CONVERSATION' is banned on some Heresy groups!
Generally, I'd say that 8ed has been really well-recieved. It's brought back a lot of players to
40k and there isn't really any separatist movement of
40k players who want to keep playing 7ed, which should tell a lot. On the other hand, it's meant a decline in 30k players in many areas, since the rules systems aren't compatible any more and 8ed feels like a much more modern war-game. Of course, if you're one of the die-hard 7ed Heresy fans, then all those people that are left weren't REAL heresy fans anyway, and the scene is still big enough so who cares - 7ed is still the best game and will be forever!
Your choice which you believe!!
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