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Warning: this is a rant.

You were warned.

Does anyone else miss the customization and fluff of third edition?
Chaos Legions allowed 9 different types of Chaos armies to be played.
Space Marines had a "build your own chapter" system, with rules to follow it.
Tyranids could even make their own units!
Imperial Guard had a crazy awesome customization list.
Craftworld Eldar, etc.

What happened GW? Why did you stop caring about the fluff, and start appealing to power gamers?
Why?!?!?!!?
What do you guys think? Me and a few friends are planning to play some 3rd edition 40k, using the 3rd edition codexes. And I honestly can't wait.
Kinda sad that I'm this excited about playing a previous edition of 40k.
Really makes me feel like this game is not moving in the right direction.

We still play 2nd edition . We far prefer it to the current style.

I have never played 3rd, but I would like to see this more.

UberhAxTHC wrote:

Does anyone else miss the customization and fluff of third edition?

rhino rush armies?
Shoot the rhino rush armies?
Screening?

thats what 3rd boiled down to. "customisation". Nope. it had its own powerbuilds, and each troops choice had only about 30 words of fluff describing it.

UberhAxTHC wrote:
Chaos Legions allowed 9 different types of Chaos armies to be played.

Aye, and yet all you saw were how Iron Warriors and the Slanneshi Siren Prince broke the game. and Nike Lords...

UberhAxTHC wrote:
Space Marines had a "build your own chapter" system, with rules to follow it.

which was easily abused. remember "we stand alone"?

UberhAxTHC wrote:
Tyranids could even make their own units!

And the system used was clunky and unwieldy. and yes: powerbuilds.

UberhAxTHC wrote:
Imperial Guard had a crazy awesome customization list.

Was it? All i remember was an extremely uncompetitive codex, and seriously dodgy justifications behind it. remember close order drill? remember ATSKNF, oh, erm, i mean Iron Discipline? For all the supposed "customisation", the builds present were extremely limited and ultimately, quite boring.

UberhAxTHC wrote:
Craftworld Eldar, etc.

broken as hell. unlimited seer councils? alaitoc disruption tables? *shrug* it was a badly designed, and badly playtested codex.

UberhAxTHC wrote:
What happened GW? Why did you stop caring about the fluff, and start appealing to power gamers?
Why?!?!?!!?
.

i seem to recall half those things you're remembering so fondly were incredibly broken. as to the fluff, "back in the day", codex eldar was about 20 pages long, and craftworld eldar was even less. remember the 30 word unit descriptions or the half page of "fluff" that was present in each codex? as opposed to the behemoth-like codices we get now? fair enough, GW is all about hero-hammer now,m but thats the chocie they've decided to roll with. If anything, GW puts more emphasis on the fluff now, in terms of giving out lots. apparently, as Jervis told us once, it was because the idea behind third was people would write their own, yet this failed ultimately as people wanted official stories. GW didnt "start appealing to powergamers". stop this lie. now. powergamers have always existed, and have always found ways to optimise an extremely poorly designed system. it was as true for second, third, fourth, fifth and i predict this trend will continue through sixth and beyond. third had the monstrosities that were the "on a 1 i go faster" blood angels, craftworld eldar, and the chaos codex still gives me the jitters.

UberhAxTHC wrote:
What do you guys think? Me and a few friends are planning to play some 3rd edition 40k, using the 3rd edition codexes. And I honestly can't wait.
Kinda sad that I'm this excited about playing a previous edition of 40k.
Really makes me feel like this game is not moving in the right direction.

you'll be dissapointed bud. third ed was not that special. screening, and rhino rush dominated. the game boiled down to "could you rhino rush the other guy before he wrecked your transports" with a huge emphasis on charging/cc-more so than shooting. heck, back then if you moved, you got 1 shot at 12 and could still charge with +1A. *shrug* meh. Honestly? drop the rose tints mate, and stop thinking 3rd was some hallowed golden age when gamers were awesome, games were somehow better and those lost days are lost to us forever.

Maybe he didn't play against power gamers in his area back then? It's perfectly possible he played against some freinds in the living room and never entered a competitive store/tournament enviornment and never had to deal with the things you described.

Then you'd think at some point it might've crossed his mind that only playing at home on the dining room table as a kid, and going down and dipping his toes in the much deeper pool of players at the FLGS, might also have had something to do with it.

UberhAxTHC wrote:Warning: this is a rant.

You were warned.

Does anyone else miss the customization and fluff of third edition?
Chaos Legions allowed 9 different types of Chaos armies to be played.
Space Marines had a "build your own chapter" system, with rules to follow it.
Tyranids could even make their own units!
Imperial Guard had a crazy awesome customization list.
Craftworld Eldar, etc.

What happened GW? Why did you stop caring about the fluff, and start appealing to power gamers?
Why?!?!?!!?
What do you guys think? Me and a few friends are planning to play some 3rd edition 40k, using the 3rd edition codexes. And I honestly can't wait.
Kinda sad that I'm this excited about playing a previous edition of 40k.

If you'd ever previously played third edition, you wouldn't be. You're entire post is founded on the misconception that just because you had all these options for 'customization,' that people actually used them, or they improved the game in any way. Nothing 'happened.' Power gamers were just as prevalent back then.

Now, if it's just you and a small group of friends, where everyone is on the same page, then you will probably get a lot out of the neat 'customization' options that 3rd ed had (then again having a small gaming group where everyone is on the same page solves all the 'problems' of 5th edition too). Once you get beyond that size though, you'll see why 'How do I beat Iron Warriors' was at least a bi-weekly topic in the tactics forum, why Blood Angel armies were literally everywhere, and why people bemoaned the ridiculously cheap amounts of lasplas guard could spam (although that was only the post 2nd ed make-do list, IIRC. 3rd ed codex V1 was rather plain, save for shennaigans with the Last Chancers, while V2 had the doctrines where you saw a whole lot of Light Infantry and Drop Troops, not so much of the rest of the stuff).

I agree with the OP, the ammount of options back then was far better, however rather than trying to ballance some glaring holes in the armies, GW just got rid of the whole custom thing all together... plain lazy

The problem with offering lots of customization like that is people min maxing and power building. Im sure is could work but I dont think GW is gonna be the company that makes it work.

keisukekun wrote:The problem with offering lots of customization like that is people min maxing and power building. Im sure is could work but I dont think GW is gonna be the company that makes it work.

They cant' even make individual codex's work.

They just should bring back customization, at the very least we'd have some fun options to go with fighting codex standard cheese.

They can't do their job 100% right so they may as well not bother? That worked out so well for TSR.

Chrysis wrote:They can't do their job 100% right so they may as well not bother? That worked out so well for TSR.

TSR failed because it had several horrible CEO's that managed to run it into the ground due to the horrid failures that became ceo's at the beginning, and later on was killed off because of Lorraine Williams, because she spent all the company resources into Buck Rogers (due to her family owning the rights to it, she got royalties), suing message boards for even mentioning Dungeons and Dragons, horrible game licensing, not to mention she spent much of the resources with a bit of nepotism on the side, meaning tons of horrible people were in part doing badly.

This is not the same deal here. I'd just like some nice customization like some of the codex's had.

This is mostly a case of rose tinted glasses more than anything else. Every edition has something that breaks it, and somebody remembers it as the greatest edition for one reason or another. There were some very cool ideas being explored with Chapter Approved and the like, but the dearth of fluff in codices and generally fewer amount of options don't make me terribly rosy-eyed for it.

UberhAxTHC wrote:
Tyranids could even make their own units!

I had a Tyranid army back in 3rd Edition, stopped playing around 2002 and just got back into the game. The customization of the Tyranids was awesome and allowed for some really sweet conversions. But they were also completely overpowered. I only played my group of friends back then, but as a Tyranid player I had about a 90% win rate. Cool customization, but tough to balance out with the other armies.

Brother SRM wrote:This is mostly a case of rose tinted glasses more than anything else. Every edition has something that breaks it, and somebody remembers it as the greatest edition for one reason or another.

I'm waiting for the day that enough time has passed that you hear people pine for the awesomeness of fourth edition.

I like the idea of extreme customization, but the sad fact is that gamerspergs will just come up with powerbuilds and everybody just does that one build to win.

The more options you add the harder it is to balance it. Even when you have a balanced codex sometimes people still do pretty monochromatic armies because while everything is 'good' some things are simply 'slighty better'.

I was rather fond of my Harkoni Warhawks and Tanith First Regiments, until Cruddace reared his ugly head and I was down from three armies to one...

Yeah, all my vets were custom conversions with FW grave chutes. Not quite as impressive now that they always seem to ride up in a chimera or valkyrie instead of performing a dynamic entry from high altitude.

Jerjare wrote:I like the idea of extreme customization, but the sad fact is that gamerspergs will just come up with powerbuilds and everybody just does that one build to win.

It's not just that. The 4th edition Space Marine codex had the trait system, where depending on how much your chapter diverged from the Codex Astartes, you took X major and minor traits and flaws. Can you really blame people for choosing as a major flaw (iirc), cannot take allies? It's easy to justify in fluff and army background, but really, not many people actually used allied WH or DH anyways, so it was pretty much a freebie.

Maybe some people use pyrovores in their nid armies this edition for whatever reason, but you don't have to even remotely be a WAAC gamer to see stuff and say, 'wow, that's a no-brainer to include.'

MrMoustaffa wrote:Maybe he didn't play against power gamers in his area back then? It's perfectly possible he played against some freinds in the living room and never entered a competitive store/tournament enviornment and never had to deal with the things you described.

This. I'd much rather GW cater to the "casual" scene than the "competative".
Having said that, I never played 3rd Edition so I can't speak for it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

KplKeegan wrote:I was rather fond of my Harkoni Warhawks and Tanith First Regiments, until Cruddace reared his ugly head and I was down from three armies to one...

Vets with camo cloaks, vets in vendettas.
The current IG codex is plenty versatile, it's just none of the options are as competative as mech vets.

I don't miss it, I play Black Templars. Techmarines with a page of wargear to choose from FTW!