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myUserName wrote:
I really like the basic concept behind the rules for movement.
The ability to move my units across the battlefield makes the game far more dynamic than they were without it.

What game do you play that doesn't have rules for movement? MTG?

I think there's a modicum of sarcasm being employed here...

As much as I hated it, I also loved it in equal measure my old Chaos Daemon codex back in 5th ed, WHOLE army deep struck, scattered (Unless the first wave had a icon or two survive) and the mishap table shafted you seven days to sunday.

BUT if the dice gods were somewhat merciful it really did feel like a full on Daemonic incursion, random hordes of Daemons popping up left right and centre and the opponents carefully deployed 'battle line' means nothing when that bloodthirster popped up behind his tank!

Or in my case, impaled on a tree.

 The Forgemaster wrote:
The rules & customisability of CSM 3.5 codex.

Yes and no..

Yes for customizability, no for the Job done by gw.

Otoh IA13 was fun even though 7the was the gakshow par excellence.

I really liked the Force Organisation Chart. It helped a lot with making armies look like armies, a proper combined arms approach.
The change to move, shoot, assault also made the game much better than the old move and shoot, stay still and shoot, run or charge situation.

I loved the 4th edition Ork Shokk Attack gun rules, where every double did a different effect.

I liked the chaos rules from 7th where the model gains chaos gifts by winning combats, and can become a daemon prince!


I loved the old build-a-tyranid rules, where you had sooooo many options (and by combining monstrous creature, furious charge and rending, you had a maximum armour penetration roll on a carnifex of 28!!).

I loved vehicles pre-hull points, where your vehicles can keep pottering around, losing weapons and function, just by rolling luckily. Hull points made it too easy to kill vehicles, and then going over to wounds is just a meh cop-out to make the rules too easy.


If I had to pick one thing to bring back to the game, it would be vehicle facings & firing arcs. the new system is too abstract, especially if the idea is to forge a narrative!

My two best rules actually aren't very good but they are funny.

First one is, " It's a grots life " from orks, always made me laugh made me think of " It's a hard knocks life " song.

The second and I've enjoyed it greatly the rule of " It's for your own good " where if a commissar was in a unit with a psyker when they perils he executes them to avoid the perils. It changed a bit over time but I loved it, it felt so good.

Many is the psyker of mine that has died to my own commissars because they dared to perils.

Personally, if they perils and fail me, they are worthless things that deserve to die so I'm glad the commissar does his duty. I used to always be sure they were in the same squads as my psykers. I know, it was a negative but I don't take failure lightly in my army.


Edit: Old shock attack gun rules, they were amazingly fun and my favorite ork unit by far. Now they are boring dull. How many times did I roll the double where the gots of a snotling are shot at the enemy ? Too many, and I don't even own orks but I would borrow them just to shoot those guns.

My favourite has to be the First Prince rule from 7th edition Corsairs.

Basically, a Corsair Prince would pick a single power from a table to make him more focused. None of them were overpowered (in fact, many even came with drawbacks), but you had some many options and so much flavour. You could have a Prince with FNP and IWND (but he suffers if he fails the IWND roll), you could have a Prince with Rampage, you could have a Prince able to use demonic magic (but pray you never roll Perils), you could have a Prince with an artefact from the Eldar, DE or Harlequin books. What's more, each power had lesser abilities that could be applied to your other HQs (for a price) if you so chose. e.g. characters in the same army as a Prince with an artefact could pay 10pts to make one of their weapons Master Crafted.

I have yet to see anything even come close to the First Prince rule in terms of either flavour or sheer customisation (and bear in mind that Corsair Princes weren't lacking in wargear options either).

The same book also gave us:

Reckless Abandon - Corsair units that fired at an enemy within 12" could immediately move 6" away from that enemy (6+d6" with a Jetpack or Jetbike). This, combined with the fact that *every* Corsair infantry model could take a Jetpack and/or Jetbike really made Corsairs *feel* mobile. You really felt like you were playing a fast, agile army. They really were everything I wanted Dark Eldar to be.

The Corsair Fleet Raiding Company - this detachment bears some resemblance to the current Dark Eldar one (where you get 4CPs if you take 3 patrols). The difference is that for Corsairs it actually worked.

I have yet to see anything even come close to the First Prince rule in terms of either flavour or sheer customisation (and bear in mind that Corsair Princes weren't lacking in wargear options either).

IA 13 demagogue devotions for renegades and heretics.

Old Zogwort turning enemy characters into squigs.

Running around on fire...

 Jidmah wrote:
Old Zogwort turning enemy characters into squigs.

Ohhhh, I miss old Zogwart. I still tell my fond story of going to an unfamiliar game club in 5th and ending up against the one guy standing around with nobody wanting to play him, and he had the competitive draigostar list and was also cheating in like a dozen different ways, but right at the end of the game I squigged Draigo and he got UNBELIEVABLY pissed off.

Wonderful rule. I loved that it didn't give you the Warlord Kill - you still had to go get the squig as it was still trying to command the enemy army.

The best rule ever?

First rank fire, second rank fire!

The best 40k rule... when some units were apocolypse only. I don't mind titanic vehicles and things liek warhounds, stompas and larger models in larger narrative games. I would have preferred imperial knights, wraith kinights, storm surges and other large models not be part of general 40k. To me 40k was the smaller part of a battle where 2 armies of infantry tanks and a few small robots did battle, not an army vs like 3 big robots. I do realize that train has left the station and there is no going back.

Red wunz go fasta.

8th edition in general has the best 40k rules overall.

Before 8th I was always peeved by monsters not suffering any of the disadvantages of vehicles. I mean a Dreadnought should be something akin to a Wraithlord. However the former could be destroyed with one shot, immobilized, stunned, weapons destroyed etc when the latter just strode along with full effectiveness until it lost its last wound. Now they are both on par and vehicles and monsters alike suffer from degrading profiles.

So one could say one of my favorite rules is in fact the abolishment of vehicle facings, firing arcs, and (penetrating hit) damage tables.

I think my fave rules that are no longer with us were:

• Area terrain blocking LoS unless you were inside it
• Having to shoot the nearest enemy unit unless you pass a Ld test

Were those both in 4th? I'm old and all the previous editions are kinda jumbled up in my head now.

Oh and asymmetrical objectives from the cards in 2nd.


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Oh I'm really keen on the return of Split Fire in 8th. Always hated having to shoot my Tac Squad Bolters and Lascannon all at the same thing.

I always liked the rule that gave you an extra attack in close combat if you hadn't shot any weapon. It always felt a really tough decision whether to take the guarenteed shots or bank on the CC attacks doing more damage.

Oh I also liked when Special Characters were opponent's permission only.

 Elbows wrote:
Any Ork rules from 2nd edition.

When the game was much smaller, the flavor was far stronger. Flavor was set aside in favor of more models = more sales = more money.

You know....I've played 2nd edition once or twice.

I really do like the breadth of options you have for what your models can do during a turn, and I like the combat involving vehicles a LOT. It is....NOOOOOOOOOT balanced. Like if you think 8th, or 7th, or whatever, is bad, 2nd edition 40k is literally like "Roll on tables to see what happens, the game."

I really strongly disagree that armies had more 'distinct flavor' in 2nd than in 8th.

Let's take a look at ork rules in 2nd edition.

1) Stats. Orks in 2nd edition had a base statline of M4, WS3 BS3 S3 T4 W1 I2 A1 Ld7. They had the same wargear as space marines (started with Bolt Pistols and Axe/Sword as base weapons, any ork could take Chainswords, Power Axes, Power Swords, Plasma Pistols etc. The only distinction was Space Marines got Boltguns as standard, while Boltguns were lumped into the Special Weapon list for Orks alongside Flamers meltas Plasmaguns etc.) Note that the only distinction in statline between a guardsman and an ork boy was 1 point of toughness more on an ork, and 1 point of initiative more on a guardsman.

All the different unit options (Stormboyz, Goff Skarboyz, Madboyz, Blood Axe Kommandos) tended to be slight stat-swaps. Nobz for example were WS4 LD8 and BS4, and they could all take special weapons and wore 4+ instead of 6+ armor.

Only Ork Boyz could choose which clan they were. Certain clans gave different options, for example Boyz from Snakebites could take Boars, and Bad Moonz boyz could take all special weapons, meaning "Shoota Boyz" only existed within Bad Moonz.

All Kommandos had to be Blood Axes. All Skarboyz had to be Goffs.

2) Units that don't exist anymore. Madboyz, Boars as a transport option, Snotlings, Ogryns, and several special characters including Ghazzy's standard bearer Makari, Wazdakka Gutsmek, Zodgrod the super-runtherd, and Nazdred Ug Urdgrub no longer exist.

However, it is worth noting that the only vehicles to exist are war bikes, nob bikes, war buggies, war trakks, and battlewagons, and then there's an Ork Dreadnought and Grot Artillery list. Battle wagons are not what they are today, they're just War Buggies that have the ability to transport an unlimited number of orks rather than having a gun.

War Buggies and War Trakks have the same weapons as Space Marine Razorbacks (Twin HB's, Heavy Plasma Gun, multi-Melta, Twin Autocannon). They were functionally identical, just having slightly different speeds and one following the rules for Wheeled Vehicles (making it more susceptible to different terrain).

in 2nd edition, each individual model had vastly more wargear freedom, it's true. However, in terms of how distinct my ork army is in practice to my opponent's army, they play much different in 8th than they do in 2nd, and in terms of having wargear that other factions don't have access to, orks now are far more distinct than orks then, and the same tends to hold true for all armies.

It is REALLY cool to shoot a gun at something, roll on a location table and see "Vehicle flips over, killing crew. The wreck comes to rest D6" away in a random direction, any model under it when i lands takes D3 S6 Ap-2 hits" or be able to randomly hit the crew and have a gunner die. it is a fun skirmish game system for sure. But I think if you look at 8th and you say "OK, my army of Raven Guard space marines, how different is it from an army of Orks and how different is it from an army of Ultramarines space marines" it'll be more distinct than the same thing in 2nd.

 Weazel wrote:
Before 8th I was always peeved by monsters not suffering any of the disadvantages of vehicles. I mean a Dreadnought should be something akin to a Wraithlord. However the former could be destroyed with one shot, immobilized, stunned, weapons destroyed etc when the latter just strode along with full effectiveness until it lost its last wound. Now they are both on par and vehicles and monsters alike suffer from degrading profiles.

So one could say one of my favorite rules is in fact the abolishment of vehicle facings, firing arcs, and (penetrating hit) damage tables.

Which mostly means units with degrading state line are not taken unless they are super cheap or super efficient.

EASY question!!!

The best rule to have ever been introduced is more of a system...

The Keyword system.

Boom! Done. Winner!

Don't agree that the armies were less distinct back then. While the stat lines were similar and the weapon names the same they played very differently. tactics that worked well for one were not as good for the other army. Whatever the reasons for this were, I suspect they were similar to historical wargames where the sides are often very similar in terms of stats and equipment yet often play very differently.


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the_scotsman wrote:
However, in terms of how distinct my ork army is in practice to my opponent's army, they play much different in 8th than they do in 2nd, and in terms of having wargear that other factions don't have access to, orks now are far more distinct than orks then, and the same tends to hold true for all armies.

Don't agree that the armies were less distinct back then. While the stat lines were similar and the weapon names the same they played very differently. tactics that worked well for one were not as good for the other army. Whatever the reasons for this were, I suspect they were similar to historical wargames where the sides are often very similar in terms of stats and equipment yet often play very differently.

 oni wrote:
EASY question!!!

The best rule to have ever been introduced is more of a system...

The Keyword system.

Boom! Done. Winner!

I agree with this. I just wish they really flesh out this system, along with a glossary of terms.

 skchsan wrote:

 oni wrote:
EASY question!!!

The best rule to have ever been introduced is more of a system...

The Keyword system.

Boom! Done. Winner!

I agree with this. I just wish they really flesh out this system, along with a glossary of terms.

Yeah, weapons could've benefited from further implementation of it from a TYPE perspective, even if attaching things like Bolt, Melta, Flame, Plasma had no rules directly attached, they could've served as elegant anchors for other rules (looking at you, Bolter Discipline...)

Re: the_scotsman

That's a nice opinion, but not one that I share. I don't think armies feel that different now beyond powerful stratagems or "I can re-roll this, and you can re-roll that". 2nd edition to me, really does feel far more thematic than current editions. You don't have to agree, but that's the beauty of opinions.

Best rule ever?

The Rogue Trader cyclone missile launcher catastrophic launch chart

Imperial Guard Doctrines.

I'll always miss those.

 Elbows wrote:
Re: the_scotsman

That's a nice opinion, but not one that I share. I don't think armies feel that different now beyond powerful stratagems or "I can re-roll this, and you can re-roll that". 2nd edition to me, really does feel far more thematic than current editions. You don't have to agree, but that's the beauty of opinions.

That is true. And there are definitely some aspects - particularly "what weapon is my model holding" that are much more free and loosey-goosey in 2nd edition. It is neat to be able to have a Genestealer Cult land raider supported by brood brothers carrying bows and arrows, that's....a thing you can do for sure.

But when it comes to "statistically, what is the difference between my regular joe schmoe guardsman, a monstrous alien hybrid genestealer cult acolyte, an ork boy, and an eldar guardian" the difference is usually something like "Well, one inch of movement here, a couple points of initiative there, and the Guardian can have a lasgun/laspistol/chainsword/power axe/power fist/power sword/hand flamer/needle pistol, while the Ork boy can have an axe/sword/power fist/power axe/chainsword/autopistol/bolt pistol"

Some of that is just the greatly reduced scale of the game, where a Land Raider is basically the biggest tank in the game, but it's also due to the high level of overlap in what different factions have. At that point in the game, most factions had a bunch of footslogging special characters, a psyker, some foot infantry, some bikers/cavalry, a medium walker, a transport, a medium tank, and some static artillery.