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3.5, after the introduction of the new assault rules. Super fun time

4th or 5th. I think my ideal version would be 4th with 5th vehicle damage chart. Though some of the Forge World army lists from later are some of the coolest things the game has ever had - looking at the 7th edition Corsair list and the 7th edition Renegades and Heretics. Luckily, with a bit of work you can pretty much forward port or backport any of the 3-7th stuff into 4th/5th, its just some things take a touch more work than others.

Which Edition changed the Strength of Blast Weapons, for penetrating armour, to 1/2 Strength unless under the central hole?

That was a pretty decent change. Not a major one, but reduced the outright killiness of stuff like Demolisher Cannons

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That was a pretty decent change. Not a major one, but reduced the outright killiness of stuff like Demolisher Cannons

4e for the half strength partials.

5e took away the ordnance damage chart - aka 'the vehicle is dead, everyone inside the vehicle is dead (no saves), everyone within 6" of the hull may also be dead'

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That was a pretty decent change. Not a major one, but reduced the outright killiness of stuff like Demolisher Cannons

4e for the half strength partials.

5e took away the ordnance damage chart - aka 'the vehicle is dead, everyone inside the vehicle is dead (no saves), everyone within 6" of the hull may also be dead'

That made me, Lord Solar Macharius, and the 6 Basilisks in my Armoured Company very sad.

Grimdark Future.
Fast and fun and finally my games of "40k" play out with a speed and ease that I always wanted them too. Yet it still "feels" like the 40k universe. Grimdark easily accommodates MASSIVE apocalypse'ish battles (I love ridiculously huge battles) in a reasonable amount of time. Also it's basically free...

I still dig into 40k fluff and play mostly with 40k figures, but for rules it's all Grimdark. I enjoy the rules so much that at this point I've probably played more Grimdark games than all other 40k editions (I played off and on from 2nd-6th) combined.

If I had to choose a GW ruleset for the 40k universe, I do like Necromunda 95 and Shadow War Armageddon (and also Mordheim). Those games take the 2nd edition mechanics and keep them at the small scope of game that they work best at. When you're only dealing with a kill-team-per-player it's no problem to have slightly crunchier old-school mechanics.

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That was a pretty decent change. Not a major one, but reduced the outright killiness of stuff like Demolisher Cannons

4e for the half strength partials.

5e took away the ordnance damage chart - aka 'the vehicle is dead, everyone inside the vehicle is dead (no saves), everyone within 6" of the hull may also be dead'

This is perhaps my biggest issue with the era of 3-5 edition. the graduated rules change across editions and codexes. It wasn't until 6th that they paradigmed the codexes. Until that point, every previous codex worked in the current edition.

So when I say that parts of 3-5 were good, it's frustrating because they add some improvements and then some terrible decisions. So you can't pick an edition or a codex to reflect that era.

The 4th targeting rules and abstract LoS are IMO still the best game implementation they've done and the half S blast was also good. But then they went and did dome things with wound allocation and vehicle damage tables.

And you can see the design shift in codex rules from the restraint of 3rd to the Wardian crap of 5th. Like, I would probably be happy with 3rd ed were it not for the fact that the 3.5 design sensiblities didn't spill into all the codexes before edition change. The eldar were still using a crappy 80pt avatar in 4th while chaos had their much better GDs from their 3.5 codex. It took the 4th ed eldar codex to give us a better eldar army.

But that means you can't use it in 3rd ed...

 Eilif wrote:
Grimdark Future.
Fast and fun and finally my games of "40k" play out with a speed and ease that I always wanted them too. Yet it still "feels" like the 40k universe. Grimdark easily accommodates MASSIVE apocalypse'ish battles (I love ridiculously huge battles) in a reasonable amount of time. Also it's basically free...

I too play OPR, fast simple and I don't like current 40k. However it is very much too lean on the crunch to make me completely satisfied. I wish they'd at least add more than two unit stats.

I'd be interested in your experience with the apoc scale battles if you've had any, the idea of using the "use squad leaders as the only measure marker for the unit" is interesting. I also wonder if you could adapt it to the GW apoc rules where you resolve damage at the end.

Wish I had the time to try 5th with my mate (we both started in 5th) but being busy adults OPR is just too handy to play instead when we get together twice a month.

4th edition and its not even close. Yes, vehicle entrapment sucked, but it was a time when skill could still win you a game over just list building and money spent on models.

The game wasn't as much point and click as it has been turned into.

Anyone remember when guess weapons were infact guess? I had a buddy who was a carpenter play and he could nail the back edge of a target within a 1/4" every time. After his forth kill with a basilisk, It felt like he was cheating, but it was in fact just skill.

 Jayden63 wrote:
4th edition and its not even close. Yes, vehicle entrapment sucked, but it was a time when skill could still win you a game over just list building and money spent on models.

The game wasn't as much point and click as it has been turned into.

Anyone remember when guess weapons were infact guess? I had a buddy who was a carpenter play and he could nail the back edge of a target within a 1/4" every time. After his forth kill with a basilisk, It felt like he was cheating, but it was in fact just skill.

Guessing distances is not a skill I care about in my war games.

And the game has plenty of skill to it today. 7th, sure, you could have matched that were forgone conclusions before deployment. But the game has skill these days.

 Jayden63 wrote:
4th edition and its not even close. Yes, vehicle entrapment sucked, but it was a time when skill could still win you a game over just list building and money spent on models.

The game wasn't as much point and click as it has been turned into.

Anyone remember when guess weapons were infact guess? I had a buddy who was a carpenter play and he could nail the back edge of a target within a 1/4" every time. After his forth kill with a basilisk, It felt like he was cheating, but it was in fact just skill.

Which is exactly why guess weapons sucked.

Clearly, for your friend, the game was kinda point and click- and not because of a game skill, but because he was a carpenter.

Timing strat and unit ability combos to play objectives may not be skills that you enjoy using- I understand that for many players, these feel more like collectible card game skills than wargame skills (a valid point, BTW), but at least they are GAME skills.

 Hellebore wrote:
And you can see the design shift in codex rules from the restraint of 3rd to the Wardian crap of 5th.

3e had first turn charges, pre-first turn unit removal, literal invulnerability, and all kinds of min-maxing among other fun design choices.

The difference was that 3e seemed to be written by rule of cool and disinterest in actual competitive balance whereas the powerful 5e books felt like they were deliberately pushing the bar up. Credit to Ward that his first book was actually on target, but I guess he had eyes on him after blowing up WHFB, pity it didn't last.

3rd ed had core rules revisions before 4th came in.

The codex were restrained compared to 5th ed..just compare the 3rd greater daemons to the 5th ed ones. Not to mention stat creep in marine characters.

3rd was basically using index style lists all the way through. 3.5 was a pretty minor change.

5th ed still had invulnerable units, but it also had the stat inflation ward loved.

 Hellebore wrote:
The codex were restrained compared to 5th ed..just compare the 3rd greater daemons to the 5th ed ones. Not to mention stat creep in marine characters.
3rd was basically using index style lists all the way through. 3.5 was a pretty minor change.

Ward definitely snuck an extra stat point or two onto some of the named characters where they weren't needed. In fairness it was somewhat in catch-up to 4e chaos, at least until GK when he was trying to one up himself.

Rulebook to end of 3e codex was night and day though. And daemons were 4e :p

 Eilif wrote:
If I had to choose a GW ruleset for the 40k universe, I do like Necromunda 95 and Shadow War Armageddon (and also Mordheim). Those games take the 2nd edition mechanics and keep them at the small scope of game that they work best at. When you're only dealing with a kill-team-per-player it's no problem to have slightly crunchier old-school mechanics.

Yes. It's interesting to go through the Wargear book in 2nd and see just how much stuff never appeared in subsequent books. It was just too fiddly and not appropriate to a game that was moving beyond the squad level to the platoon. That is why I looked at ways to cut out the non-essential elements like models being on fire, rolling for plasma diameter, jump pack scatter, etc. Because of the granularity, there is still a practical limit, but if you do things like resolve close combats without re-rolls, it goes a lot faster.

My preferred edition is 5th edition.

My group settled on it as a point where most of the units are in the game, and also a lot of the units that wpuld be dropped haven't been, so its a good point for us. I use my witch hunters & daemonhunters codecies, and my 5e IG, & SW codecies.

For me, there are a couple of reasons I prefer this. The most important is the mechanics. I dislike the 8th and post mechanics, especially multiwound proliferation and the overall mushiness of the system. The 3rd - 7th structure is much preferred and while its also not my favorite of all the systems I play, its the best of 40k. In this sense, 5th is the best of them, because it is also still at a point where the movement versus shooting trade off is stronger, so while weapons have effect and feel good, the overall effect isn't as catastrophic. In a sense, your guns are more powerful, but you get to use less of them because most of the time you spend moving.

For 5th more specifically, 5th is before that flyers, Lords of War, and Allies became a common part of the game. While I play Witch Hunters, own 6 baneblades and a macharius and 6 malcadors, and a vendetta, so Im aware the all of those were new for 6th and had been around since IA1 at least, but they weren't like normal in the game.

Also 5th is before hull points for vehicles. I dont like hit point mechanics as damage modelling for individual vehicle and person elements, so I dont like the idea of multiwound infantry monstrous creature rules, or vehicle hull points. Fundamentally hitpoints are not an appropriate model for damage modelling in a game at the scale of 40k, and even within 40ks own system, toughness represents the resistance to becoming a casualty, while wounds represent plot armour: a character suffering a wound that would have caused them to become a casualty, but not becoming one.