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Just got a copy of the old sisters of battle codex witch hunters circa 2003 and I must say I really wish the newer codexes kept some parts of the old.

what I really enjoyed for example were some pictures of their drafting design pics. It even shows a crusader using a power axe! (looks like they had this in mind from back 10 yrs ago!)

Also for some reason I really liked the "why they fight" section helping to explain why you might be fighting space marines and or IG for example. Was very helpful to jump start some narrative battles. I'm kind of surprised they got rid of that. It'd be very useful for the SM or GK or IG dex for example.

What I really missed and really wish they kept was the "how to model and how to paint" section.

They even tell you where to get other figures like warhammer fantasy men at arms for crusaders or zombies for alternative psykers/pentitants. That's stuff I usually have to start a dakka thread for now a days. Knowing exactly what shade of brown to get to pain hair just like them was also very useful. I've found my own recipe after all this time of course but it's really helpful to see the exact codex color to buy instead of doing it my way of buying $300 bucks of paints and trial and erroring myself through it all. (Since I didn't know what colors to really buy, I got vallejo paints instead of codex colors so GW essentially lost business from me anyway)

Do you guys think any or all of the above should be brought back in the future or why they got rid of them in the first place?

Yes, extra painting and modelling advice would be very welcome, having pictures of their own conversions would just be extra inspiration and surely that's no bad thing. With the whole focus on "forging a narrative" now that would have been a good reason to bring back the "why they fight" section. And behind the scenes stuff is something I'm always interested in, it'd be very interesting to see the design sketches. My LGS has a huge stack of old army books for sale and I've often considered picking a few up just for conversion ideas or extra fluff.

As for why they took this kind of thing away...no idea, perhaps you're supposed to buy WD for that now?

I miss the modelling & painting parts of the codices most of all.

2nd edition codexes were by far the best there has been. What has followed has been inferior on pretty much every level but the actual rules.

Witchunters and Daemonhunters were actually the odd ones out in 3rd edition considering what they featured (modeling advise, design images etc) and even on as basic level as page numbers. Most codexes then were little more than pamphlets.

I had the deamonhunters codex, a nightmare when you were trying to make an army out of it. You had to shuffle the codex 2-3 times just to get points cost for a single unit.

Why they fight section seems a redundant today. There has been many books by BL for this and there is considerable fluff for every faction that the reasons for fighting are easy to learn.

The conversion and painting suggestions i agree were a great part. We definitely need more of those.

For $50 a book they'd better put something nice in there, damn it.

I miss the old armoury, I liked having endless options of junk on my characters even though some of it really didn't do to much. I loved being able to put stuff like bionics and Auspex.

I just bought the Eldar 2nd edition codex off Amazon, just for the entertainment of reading it. I'd someday like to play a couple of games of 2nd ed (I also bought the Rulebook and wargear books for 2e at the same time), but it is worth it just to read it. Like it's been said before, 2nd ed Codexes put all later books to shame with their wealth of fluff. They entirely earned the nostalgia they get.

Even the rules were worth it for the sheer fun. I could play an Ultramarines Terminator force of the 1st Company, straight out of the codex with no special characters or rules required.

Also, all the rifleman dreads everyone loves nowadays are straight out of that 20 year old book. Back then, you could arm a dreadnought with any two dreadnought weapons you liked from the list, for any Chapter.

I feel the layout of the older Codexes (3rd-4th) was far better but the reference sections of 6th Ed are great.

Plus the add on Codexes such as BA and DA only containined ammendments to the main Space Marine Codex meaning they were only £4.

I would have to agree that I think the second ed codexes were just amazing. Incredible artwork, awesome color photo sections, and they always had some really great short stories and fluff sprinkled in. The Chaos codex in particular had a running story. There were three or four paragraphs that would appear every 10-15 pages or so and they built to a pretty cool climax. You just don't see that a whole lot anymore.

WD #383 (US #382) has a SoB painting masterclass with some more fluff, just in case anyone's interested.

Glorioski wrote:2nd edition codexes were by far the best there has been. What has followed has been inferior on pretty much every level but the actual rules.
Witchunters and Daemonhunters were actually the odd ones out in 3rd edition considering what they featured (modeling advise, design images etc) and even on as basic level as page numbers. Most codexes then were little more than pamphlets.

QFT - that's how I see it as well. We could hope that the 6E rulebook and its large fluff section might hint at a return to old habits, though? Especially since codices seem to become hardcover tomes now - they've got to fill those pages with something, right?

pizzaguardian wrote:Why they fight section seems a redundant today. There has been many books by BL for this and there is considerable fluff for every faction that the reasons for fighting are easy to learn.

Ehh... honestly, Black Library is good when you're looking for a story, but lack of consistency enforcement means that the fluff is so random and contradictory you may just as well come up with your own ideas. Not to mention that some armies are so underrepresented that even BL's authors would have little to offer you. Half the internet seems to believe that Sisters, for example, only fight human heretics, so apparently things are not so clear.
Personal choice and opinion, of course, but in case of the SoB, I would say the most and the best fluff has always come from GW directly - even though it's a pain looking for it, considering that it is all over the place in small snippets.

 Lynata wrote:

Glorioski wrote:2nd edition codexes were by far the best there has been. What has followed has been inferior on pretty much every level but the actual rules.
Witchunters and Daemonhunters were actually the odd ones out in 3rd edition considering what they featured (modeling advise, design images etc) and even on as basic level as page numbers. Most codexes then were little more than pamphlets.

QFT - that's how I see it as well. We could hope that the 6E rulebook and its large fluff section might hint at a return to old habits, though? Especially since codices seem to become hardcover tomes now - they've got to fill those pages with something, right?

I hope so. I don't think they realise there is a market in creating a codex which not only appeals to people who play that army but people who are into 40k in general.