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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
2nd Ed? Even a basic sword could be used to Parry - forcing your opponent to re-roll an attack die (typically their highest), which could allow you to win that fight. Power Swords also hit at S5 with I think -3 to your save.

Power Axes could be wielded one or two handed for different hitting power and so on.

Come 3rd Ed? Close Combat weapon could be a knife, or a Space Marine Chainsword and its…..hit at your own strength, and opponent gets their full save. Power Weapons just ignored armour.

This is what screwed Howling Banshees up for so many editions. I can understand it for the list in the 3rd ed rulebook - and even the 3rd edition codex - but by the time their next list came around they really needed their vanilla power weapon replacing with a Banshee Blade that gave them a strength boost. After all, it is very hard to be an elite-killing unit if you cannae wound the elites you're trying to hunt.

Indeed. Banshees got hit so hard with a Nerf Bat, I’m not entirely convinced they completely recovered.

In 2nd Ed, they were redonkulus. Striking at S5 thanks to their Power Sword. And having a pistol for two close combat weapons, rolled two attacks.

The Banshee Mask though? On the charge (and maybe first round of combat? I’d need to check) reduced the opponent to WS1.

And that mattered, because 2nd Ed Combat were essentially Duels. Both sides rolled their attack dice, and added the highest dice to their Weapon Skill. The victor score the difference in Hits on the opponent.

Each “1” rolled reduced your score by 1. Every six rolled beyond the first added 1 to your score. Any tied scores were decided by Highest Initiative.

So, not only did Banshees have a respectable WS? They nerfed yours. Their Power Sword could also parry, making your life harder. And should you get lucky? You typically lost ties, because they had Eldar Initiative.

But? The big downside was getting them safely into combat, as they were fragile. And the Falcon was a later addition, so for a good while you had no transports.

So they were natural fire magnets. But then so were the other Aspect Warriors. And trust me. You only needed one Banshee to make contact and your squad was in for a right good kicking.

In my experience having been ion the receiving end of Eldar at the time. Eldar were broken.

Warp spiders alone could nearly table my meager Space Marine force and there was next to nothing I could do about it.

Close combat was a slog. I recently looked back at the rules for second and it looked like you could use close combat to just grind a game to a stand still. It's the one part of the game I see as not really good. I would still love to play 2nd again especially now with 28 years of 40K games under my belt. The lists would be far better than they were when I was a noob with next to no money to throw at my 40K army.

I loved plasma missiles. Wonderful way to messy up a battle field.

I forgot about the four weapons in the Command squad and Blood Angels are indeed another one of the extra codices but my point stands that you still just couldn't like drop lots of those squads. I'm still feeling confident that there is no veteran squad with power weapon options across the squad.

 Just Tony wrote:
I forgot about the four weapons in the Command squad and Blood Angels are indeed another one of the extra codices but my point stands that you still just couldn't like drop lots of those squads. I'm still feeling confident that there is no veteran squad with power weapon options across the squad.

Yeah, I forget the details - the object was to cram as many power weapons in as I could. They were the bodyguard for my captain, so whatever bonuses there were, I used.

That was my CC fire brigade, which would race to the point of the line where the enemy was likely to make contact. They did their job.

 warhead01 wrote:
Close combat was a slog. I recently looked back at the rules for second and it looked like you could use close combat to just grind a game to a stand still. It's the one part of the game I see as not really good. I would still love to play 2nd again especially now with 28 years of 40K games under my belt. The lists would be far better than they were when I was a noob with next to no money to throw at my 40K army.

One of the changes I made was to reduce single combats to a single opposed roll. Same math, less time. Games go much faster.

As much as the dueling is annoying, it limits the damage cheesed-up melee monsters can do, because they can only kill what they catch. It also provides balance because you can send in a squad and save the sergeant with the power fist for last.

Aspect warriors are a lot of fun, and 3rd really neutered them. I mean the Eldar as whole got pretty screwed in terms of Shuricats being so short ranged. No wonder they resorted to Star Cannon spam, it was their most viable option.

Don’t forget Fire Dragons had their Meltaguns swapped for Fusion Guns and a “the hell am I supposed to do with that?” S6.

Or Warp Spiders becoming awful (yes they were too good in 2nd. But that’s the Nerfing equivalent of kneecapping someone because they used a word you don’t care for)

Swooping Hawks becoming…..utterly pointless. And so on.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Don’t forget Fire Dragons had their Meltaguns swapped for Fusion Guns and a “the hell am I supposed to do with that?” S6.

Or Warp Spiders becoming awful (yes they were too good in 2nd. But that’s the Nerfing equivalent of kneecapping someone because they used a word you don’t care for)

Swooping Hawks becoming…..utterly pointless. And so on.

And yet, for all of these useless things Eldar apparently had, they still wiped the floor with everyone else (except some of the 3.5 chaos cheese) all edition long. Iirc the only time they’ve ever been actually weak was 5th, when they went the entire edition with an old codex.

With very specific, very spammy lists. The overall contents of those Codexes were crap.

My local group were playing the hell out of WHFB 5e around the release of 3e, and were getting a bit tired of only playing WHFB. The same group's 40K scene was about half of us playing 2000 point 40K 2e games as the standard, you see, and if you'd done the slow-grow army buildup since release, that was fine. But to come into the game new at that scale was...daunting. So for about half the WHFB players, myself included, 40K was a spectator sport.

So 40K 3e comes out, and it's a chance for everyone to start fresh. And boy, did we. The whole WHFB group got into it, the existing 40K players either started new armies to build with us, or slowly replaced their armies with the new miniatures and only played with those to replicate the slow-grow experience.

And we got in more games with bigger armies, and we had a lot of fun spending time together as friends with 3e...

...but when we were telling 40K war stories over dinner ten years later, they were always from 2e and never 3e.

 morganfreeman wrote:
And yet, for all of these useless things Eldar apparently had, they still wiped the floor with everyone else

Being knocked down from supremely overpowered to just overpowered is still technically a nerf :p

I think the best way I can describe my own experience of 2nd ed and 3rd onwards is that if I won big and lop-sided in 2nd I probably didn't get there through skill.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
With very specific, very spammy lists. The overall contents of those Codexes were crap.

Hasn't that kind of always been the way Eldar were? A couple disgustingly overpowered units/combos buttressing an otherwise lackluster Codex?

Post 2nd Ed? Yes.

But I’m not necessarily pinning the blame for that on 3rd Ed. Yes the over-nerfing originated there, but as 4th-6th improved the underlying rules, the various incarnations of Codex Eldar remained horrifically skewed.

I think that, when posting for this thread, it should be important to make distinct the difference between the Core Rules and the Content.

For instance, this is probably nostalgia talking, but 7th Edition (the one I started in) had some reasonably solid core rules. I don't think they were perfect, certainly, but as a base? Pretty decent.
The content, though... Hoo boy, that was rough. Wild disparities in power between something like Orcs and Necrons. Complicated hoop-humping to do what you want in terms of building a list, with a ton of Formations and such altering how it worked. Layered rules.

Also, quick question: What edition did Soul Blaze start in? Was it only in 7th? Because holy crap was it a useless rule.

Lol it was 2007, fourth edition, for the tzeentch version of csms-with-icon squad. Like you said, a completely forgettable pointless rule.


Look in the filmdeg interviews - and most prior ones thus isn't new - the subjects say second edition was already created to be a collecting game and not a tactical game, it wrong to say that was third. The structural problem is already there at the time.

Without the problems that video from being g the highest earning line and from having too many cooks, GW has made very good mass battle games. People attest all the time to the merits of MESBG and Epic Armageddon

Howling Banshees were still popular enough in 3rd edition because even with S3 against T4 they skipped the whole step involving the armour save letting two thirds of the wounded marines survive. Banshees fared a lot worse against T5 or the like but they could whup marines well enough. Nobody in power armour particularly liked seeing squads of them drop out of Wave Serpents. They were as much of a part of Eldar being anti-MEQ specialists as the Starcannon was.

Striking Scorpions got to be more generalist close combat troops, though. Banshees were solidly specialised against small-ish units that relied on their armour keeping them alive. Hordes, monsters and vehicles made them sweat.

Unless my maths is wonky? And it probably is….Banshees and Marines in 3rd Ed did similar levels of damage to each other?

Now, the first bit I’ve probably gone wrong is WS. But I think both units were WS4. So each have a 1/2 chance of landing a hit.

The Marines, being S4 vs T3 had a 2/3 chance of wounding.

The Banshees, being S3 vs T4 had a 1/3 chance of wounding.

Now, with a 4+ Save, the Banshees would save 1/2 the wounds from the Marines. The Marines would save nowt, on account No Saves For You, Smelly Mon-Keigh.

So. Let’s say 10 attacks each. And I’ll round down, counting fractions as a success.

Marines should land 5 hits. Two thirds of those will wound. So 4 wounds (remember I’m rounding favourably for nice whole numbers). Banshees would save 50%, so Two Dead Banshees.

Banshees also land 5 hits. One third of which wound. So Two Dead Marines.

Of course the Banshees Helmet would help, as it was typically rare for them to strike last, letting them reduce the Marines number.

But when your Elite Close Combat Troops are doing the same damage as 10 Bog Standard Tactical Marines? Your Elites are weedy.

As I said though my maths is quite possibly off. All I ask of anyone looking to correct (and I genuinely welcome that!) is to likewise round favourably in all instances.

Yeah, though Banshees would have more attacks than Marines in most situations. 10 vs 10 means Banshees are outnumbered unless they're up against marine CC specialists.

10 attacks vs 10 attacks isn't accurate to the circumstances you'd want to play them in, though, because that would be 5 Howling Banshees getting charged by 5 tactical marines, or in a complete vacuum against 10 tac marines or 5 assault marines. Additionally, they strike first so the casualties they inflicted had an impact on how many hits they took in return.

16 points of loud elf got you a very decent amount of killing power against the standard 15 points of marine (or 25 if they're slugging it out against jump troopers) in the 7-10 HB vs 5-10 various marines situations you were aiming for. People didn't always like to run larger squads of marines because you got less big guns per point spent on them that way. Two 75-point squads of five dudes each with two sets of big guns was more popular than one 150-point squad with one set of big guns, especially because you could have twice the amount of las/plas Razorbacks that way.


All that said, Banshees were absolutely not happy about long combats. They were part of the glass cannon specialist approach several Eldar units had; overwhelming when used at the right time against the right target, outright tragic otherwise.

The Eldar close combat unit that really got screwed was Striking Scorpions in my opinion.

It’s more to demonstrate just how weedy Banshees had become.

Had Power Swords retained some kind of S bonus (as they latterly regained, but I can’t remember when) then Banshees could still have been terrors, instead of something relatively desultory fire could reduce to a Mere Annoyance.

And the same was true of most if not all Aspect Warriors.

Dark Reapers really good against MEQ. Solid rate of fire, solid range and AP3 meant even their typically smaller squad size could still dominate the field. But….thats about all they could do. They lacked the numbers/rate of fire for Horde armies, and the S to really bother monsters and vehicles.

If memory serves, Dire Avengers wound up as Slightly Better Guardians, as in 3rd they were still stuck with the pathetic 12” Shuriken Catapults.

Swooping Hawks just didn’t work. I was never terribly convinced by them in 2nd Ed, but their Grenade Pack could be good.

Fire Dragons? An entire unit of supposedly Elite Tank Hunters with a weedy Melta equivalent.

Warp Spiders? Ugh. Just utterly useless in 3rd. No AP and a short ranged, rapid fire weapon does not a useful agile unit make, despite the S6.

Shining Spears just weren’t as useful as regular Jetbikes for the extra points, because once again their Aspect Weapon was bobbins.

Striking Scorpions were OK though. 3+ Armour, Infiltrate a veritable bucket of attacks always has its place.

But for the Best of the Best an entire species had to offer? They were an embarrassment.

Yes other formerly “well, either it dies or all my dudes die” units suffered in 3rd as well. But none as heavily as Aspect Warriors.

Consider Terminators vs Banshees in 2nd Ed. As demonstrated, Banshees on the charge were all but unbeatable. Sure, the -3 save modifier would still struggle with the 3+ on 2D6 save - but because the Banshees would typically win with a solid number of hits? You could ususally bank on killing most if not all of the unit. Yes any that won their duel would almost certainly pulp a Banshee, but that was kind of part for the Banshee Path. You either charged in a broke the enemy unit in a turn, or had to accept often horrendous casualties if the combat ticked over another turn.

3rd Ed? If even two Terminators survived? They had a not terrible chance of killing up to four Banshees - just took some jammy to-hit rolls, as the 2+ to squelch took care of the rest of that equation. And you might as well not bother charging Thunder Hammer and Stormshield ones at all!

I don't know how much better they were in 2nd ed, but in 3rd ed people liked them because they had a 3+ save and their mandiblasters gave them effectively a bonus attack which all together made them much better at fighting light infantry than Banshees were. They also had access to haywire grenades wich inflicted glancing or penetrating hits on flat rolls regardless of armour value plus a power fist equivalent for their exarch, which made them more of a concern for vehicles and monsters. The exarch could even get up to S9.

Lots of people wondered if they or Banshees were best and the answer was always that it depended on how many marines you knew you were going to fight.

Even against Marines Striking Scorpions were at least OK thanks to their save and volume of S4 attacks. Plus, an Exarch with a Scorpion claw could really swing a punch up thanks to WS5.

Against Guard and equivalent? Provided they could scuttle from combat to combat, they were pretty nasty.

Dark Reapers getting demoted from a proper missile launcher with like five missile options to the "Reaper Launcher" that was pretty strictly for use against MEQ and tyranid warrior-level of monsters was a kick in the dick. Shining Spears were cool but suffered from bikers and jetbikes being solidly overcosted.

I don't know much about Warp Spiders. They had one of the odder weapons in the game but being able to teleport 12" and then toss an S6 shot into something must've had some sort of use. I don't remember them being widely recommended or cautioned against but I never paid much attention to Eldar-only discussions. Looking at the codex, that mobility and kind of gun with a 3+ save for 22 points must've been pretty okay at something.

Fire Dragons were very good at shooting marines even at only one shot each, and Swooping Hawk exarchs could have power weapons and roll extra attacks for every single attack they hit. That's just an unwholesome thing to put in a fast attack slot. Seems maybe unreliable but I guess it could do well enough if you didn't bring Banshees.

Thing is with Swooping Hawks? They were just an expensive delivery system of ablative wounds for a pretty squishy unit champion.

Overall Eldar suffered from the general increase in squad sizes not being taken into account.

Not only in terms of damage output, but if you miscalled your Aspect unit’s charge and were just out of 6”? They’re toast, even against stuff like Ork Boyz and their woeful accuracy, because instead of maybe 10 as there were in 2nd Ed? There’s now 30 of the big green gits.

Same with Termagants (up to 32 in a unit) and even your standard squad of Guardsmen, who when rapid firing could max out at 20 Lasgun shots.

Hence we saw beardy cheesy Eldar Lists, centred on the few resilient or super Killy (sometimes both!) units each iteration of their Codex contained.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So. Let’s say 10 attacks each. And I’ll round down, counting fractions as a success.

Two attacks base for banshees (pistols).

A full 10 man assault squad, plus power sword, and the veteran, and the charge would average barely more than three marine kills and will take all of the return attacks at the same init.

Charging banshees? Six marines, seven with a successful war shout free and clear before taking return fire.

3rd edition close combat was also a little different to the more recent 'pile in' style rules, depending on how the assaulting unit is positioned relative to the defenders there may not be much in the way of models to swing back, and the exarch can reposition themselves to kill a power weapon wielding character before they can swing (3s to hit and 2s to wound for the exarch).


The difference between 3rd and 2nd is that in 2nd you didn't particularly need to bother rolling with equal numbers, just remove the marines to speed up the game - the banshees parry was irrelevant because the marines rolled no attack dice against them, each banshee just rolled two dice and picked the highest and then hit the marines that many times plus one unless they double-fumble, wound on 3s and save on 6s.
And they cost less than marines.

My example used the same number of attacks for ease of reference, not necessarily in-game accuracy.

2nd Ed Banshees I just shot. A lot. That’s how I dealt with them. Sometimes I did the damage before they got to me, sometimes I didn’t. But if even a couple made it into combat? They hurt, a lot. Yes as each fought second and subsequent duels my chances of killing they went up, but at base WS0? Rarely if ever fast enough to save me from the inevitable blender.

The other thing Eldar lost were “proper” Exarchs. When they were mid-level characters in their own right, and capable of horrific acts of violence.

Not being strictly tied to squads, and not even needing a given Aspect on the field (just max on per Aspect Squad) they were decent force multipliers. They felt special, and with some judicious wargear card selection impressively Killy.

Eldar wouldn’t see their like again until the Autarch came to 40K.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
My example used the same number of attacks for ease of reference, not necessarily in-game accuracy.

2nd Ed Banshees I just shot. A lot. That’s how I dealt with them. Sometimes I did the damage before they got to me, sometimes I didn’t. But if even a couple made it into combat? They hurt, a lot. Yes as each fought second and subsequent duels my chances of killing they went up, but at base WS0? Rarely if ever fast enough to save me from the inevitable blender.

But Banshees still blenderized marines, they just did so in a slightly different way. As has been pointed out they paid a single point more than tactical marines in exchange for a power sword, ASL on anyone they charged, and extra attacks due to paired weapons. So while that tactical squad wasn't *completely* unable to defend itself, at the end of the day it might be making a whole 3-5 basic s4 attacks in return; mathmatically killing less than a single banshee after said banshees wiped out 60-70% or more of the squad.

And tactical marines are the most favorable target for the marines.

Banshees charging terminators was a freaking blood bath. Sure they'd lose more guys when the terminators struck back, but as terminators were a painful 40PPM it was a more than fair trade; and that's only if they fought a big ol' blob of 10 terminators. Smaller units would just get wiped. If banshees got ahold of any smaller / wounded squads they'd eat them up no questions asked.

And that is, again, just marines; and while marines are the poster boys they're not the only thing out there. IIRC banshees murderized pretty much anything that wasn't a unit of tough multi-wound melee beatsticks. So they weren't going to kill you a carnifex, but they could still put plenty of hurt on a unit of mega-armored nobz before being hit back.

So this is another one of those gripes about nerfs that I don't "get". Banshees had a role and they were arguable best-in-class at it; but they also couldn't blend anything they touched, and there was the potential for them to be worn down by a few survivors; rather than utterly removing the ability for their foes to strike back in most cases. Having an amazing CC unit that might take some light casualties in CC is O.K. I'd say it's actually good design, as you need to account for players being on the receiving end of stuff like this still being able to feel like they're playing the game.

The issue is one of "feeling".

Sure Banshees were still good at killing Marines from a points perspective, but when the reason for that is because Banshees are cheap it kinda kills the whole "elite space elves with power swords" vibe they supposedly have.

When ordinary catachans have sometimes hit at s4, (totally fine) and Harker still does, its interesting the studio never chose Dire Avengers and the other aspects to have natural s4. I think what that could say about the studio is more important than a statement about what's fair or feels right or the way things should be


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The chainsword losing its defensive benefit and s4 losing its -1 to armour had huge effects on the actual background.

An ordinary marine in an assault squad is hard to kill when he has those rules. I think losing those resulted in the escalation of extra elite marine squads: Vanguard, sanguinary guard and bladeguard, centering of hammernators, and probably just large parts of the Heresy background itself

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Recently-released interviews with GW production staff confirm what was long suspected: the desired revision of 2nd was derailed by Upper Management, which did not prioritize quality rules or game integrity. As we all know, 2nd was flawed because it was a work in progress. By 1998, however, a series of FAQs had been released to curb its worse excesses. The codicies saw a consistent improvement in quality as well as broadening the model range in appropriate ways (Eldar tanks, for example).

We can get a glimpse of what "2nd ed., Revised" would have looked like in Bolt Action,...

From stuff that was said back in the day, supposedly the Starship Troopers game is essentially the ruleset the studio (or at least Andy Chambers) wanted for 3rd edition. So it would still have been a significant departure from 2d edition.