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I started playing WH40K right when 6th edition began and I've always heard about how previous editions were better/worse then the current 6th edition. This has always got me curious as I have no knowledge of what the previous editions were like other then that vehicles didn't have hull points before. What were the older editions like? What were the parts that you liked/disliked? And if, in your opinion, a certain edition should be brought back, which one would it be?

RT for me.

I began with orks when they sported punker do's and carried beer-keg Heavy Plasma Guns and bolters.

It's been a long long ride, though Orks are still my main and favorite army.


6th to me feels like an attempt to revive 2nd edition, in some ways.

RT was frankly a disorganized mess, gameplay wise. It was more a roleplaying game which used models.

I have the 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition rulebooks sitting on my shelf (never bought 6th actually, the people I usually play with have enough copies to go around). Never actually played a 3rd edition game.

I have heard wondrous things about the vehicle damage charts in 1st/2nd edition. I really wish I could try them out, just once.

I liked 5th, heresy though that may be. I wouldn't have minded staying in 5th, though 6th is ok.


I would like some of the old ork wackiness back though.

Madboyz charts
Orky cybernetics tables
Squig-brained dreads...

 Ascalam wrote:
I liked 5th, heresy though that may be. I wouldn't have minded staying in 5th, though 6th is ok.


I would like some of the old ork wackiness back though.

Madboyz charts
Orky cybernetics tables
Squig-brained dreads...

Let's see what goodies we get with the new codex.

I started in 5th, so I can't say much about the other editions. I do say, though, that I really enjoy 6th. I'm not a fan of some things (you can't please everyone, all the time) but I do enjoy it. Of the two, I prefer 6th, because it seems more entertaining (to me, at least) in both the casual and semi-competitive set, but I play more casual, so that may bias me.

Looking forward to it, as long as they don't totally feth it up

 Ascalam wrote:
Looking forward to it, as long as they don't totally feth it up

Squiggoths and Stompas as part of standard 40k.

 Ascalam wrote:
RT for me.
...
RT was frankly a disorganized mess, gameplay wise. It was more a roleplaying game which used models.

Is RT basically the '1st Edition'?

 Kain wrote:

 Ascalam wrote:
Looking forward to it, as long as they don't totally feth it up

Squiggoths and Stompas as part of standard 40k.

Wouldn't shock me I'd be good with it.

 Ascalam wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Ascalam wrote:
Looking forward to it, as long as they don't totally feth it up

Squiggoths and Stompas as part of standard 40k.

Wouldn't shock me I'd be good with it.

And also Ghazghkull getting a monstrous creature statline since every weedier boss has S5 T5 too.

 gnoise wrote:

 Ascalam wrote:
RT for me.
...
RT was frankly a disorganized mess, gameplay wise. It was more a roleplaying game which used models.

Is RT basically the '1st Edition'?

Yup. 1st edition 40K was Rogue Trader.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Warhammer_40,000#.UaWOaEB1-XY

I played Laserburn before that I was also into Fantasy Battle at the time. The early WHFB books had some AWESOME artwork too...

I started the same week 4th came out, and as a casual gamer I feel it has just gotten better and better.

6th to me just plays well and spawns a lot of fun things with the randomness. If my opponent and I aren't up for the randomness we just opt not to do it.

I'm happy with 6th because I've just started getting okay at the new rules and having been playing since RT, I've realised that rules come and go but in the end, YOU make the game fun... (Wow, I've been in marketing too long!)

There are some good things about 6th, but I think 5th edges it out. 5th edition only had one really awful thing - wound wrapping - but was otherwise fine. 6th edition fixed a lot of things that only sort of needed fixing, while breaking a lot of things that were working very well.

In the end, I kind of feel like 6th edition is like a new version of windows - great in theory, but so poorly executed in some places that it's better to wait until its first service pack comes out. Thankfully, they've been doing a very good job of getting FAQs and codices out, but I feel like we're probably going to have to wait for 7th to get some of the stuff broken in 6th sorted out.

I said 3rd only because I really liked the 3.5 codex supplement: Craftworld Eldar. We shall see if Codex: Eldar will breath new "life" into my Iyanden army.

Overall 5th and 6th are better games that run smoother, have more balance, and in general don't get boring as fast due to objectives, etc.

I actually like alot of the stuff 6th brought in with the flyers/FMC but I look forward to 7th when they tweak rules and hopefully even out the assault vs shooting balance.

I was a fan of 3rd. I started getting into 40k a month or so before 3rd came out. Didn't get to play before the 3rd release.

3rd was awesome. Maybe not the rules themselves but the edition was the best.

Chapter Approved provided all kinds of awesome upgrades and armies and units.

Codexes were full of character and there were minidexes!

Codex: Craftworld Eldar, Codex: Armeggedon, Codex: Chaos 3.5!!!!!!(greatest codex ever written).

Terminators got their first invul save! Vehicle Design rules! Scarabs weren't swarms and could explode!

No Tau!!!! Sisters had rules in the main book! Tyranids got sexy! DIAZ DAEMONETTES!

Gamesday had events and stuff worth traveling to see! FW had like 4 items for sale!

Plastic Dreadnoughts?!!! NO FETHING WAY!!!!

Now everything is... Oh look... new big thing. Oh hey... Hardcover overpriced codexes.... Wow... more Space Marines....

I played mostly 5th, tried a bit of 4th.

4th ed codexes were pretty great, along with their 3.5 predecessors; lots of customization, you could make every force truly unique, fighting the way you wanted while being fluffy and somewhat killy. 5th had very, very bland codexes with only a few suitable lists (still the case for most 5th ed books), and the way vehicles worked annoyed the feth out of me. Actually killing even a rhino was such a chore.

6th ed feels a bit more lethal; vehicles are more easily killed, especially by dedicated anti-tank units, and because there's less invincible motor pools, infantry tend to go down more often. Feels bloodier, deadlier, riskier, which is what I've enjoyed. GW business policy, however, in 6th is frakking garbage, and there's many old things I miss dearly from the business side. The only business decision that's genuinely better is the rate of codex release.

Overall, I'm liking 6th the most, but it's very dependent on how the codexes continue to develop, and how much GW proceeds to irritate me.

6th. I am so glad that fecking 5th with its "WHO CAN SPAM MOAR TRANSPORTZ" spam is gone.

6th. Because that's the edition I started playing

dementedwombat wrote:
I have heard wondrous things about the vehicle damage charts in 1st/2nd edition. I really wish I could try them out, just once.

You can! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2849355/40k%202nd%20Edition/45857409-Warhammer-40k-Battle-Bible-1-51.pdf

For me it's 2nd, although not perhaps because it was 'the best' per se. I guess for me it's that I prefer smaller games with greater detail - even in 6th we tend to prefer smaller games more, particularly enjoying Kill Team games. For me 2nd had its OP WTF moments, though this was more due to some weapon/unit rules or else the general freedom it gave when writing an army list - which people abused to create uber-units of death, when perhaps they'd have been better off staying true to the background.

In a way 2nd had a great basic rules set, back when you could split fire as you wished and your vehicles sponsons could target other units (the shock, the horror!). I also preferred the missions and the flexibility of the game.

Other editions have added things I've liked but in many ways 2nd Edition remains the 'archetype' for Codex books (barely changing bar the 3rd/3.5 dex's) and now (with 6th) more random elements. Also 2nd Edition is back when you didn't need that many models in an army and before people demanded to use bigger armies, which in turn has led to continued points drops - there's only so low the points value of a Tactical Marine can go before we start seeing 4pts Orks

As a platoon-scale skirmish game, 2nd Edition is still great IMHO. In a way I wish GW would release an archive of prior editions for people to use as they wish, although they can be found elsewhere

I started towards the beginning of 5th ed. I've enjoyed both 5th and 6th; there's only been 1 big thing that I really dislike in each edition.
For 5th, the wound shenanigans: it isn't fair or in the spirit of the game taking a 10 nob squad and spreading out all the wounds so it takes 11 wounds before 1 of them dies.
For 6th, I think HP are a little too much. I'm glad the parking lot/ vehicle spam has finally been controlled. However, glancing a Hammerhead 3 times to kill it is a little underpowered. Maybe if they had made it so HP is only removed from penetrating hits it'd be more even?
That being said, I'm really glad that they added overwatch. It makes the game slightly more realistic, and I can't tell you how many times I wished out loud that my tau could shoot before they get charged/wiped.

I like the current edition. The editions of yesteryear were all neat, but the new changes are fun. The only thing I miss from previous editions were the meta; back when marines were marines and ork fighter-bombers only existed in the rare wisps of rumors and forgeworld.

6th edition is by far the best edition yet. I love it. The only thing I dislike is the random psychic powers.

 DeffDred wrote:


No Tau!!!! Sisters had rules in the main book! Tyranids got sexy! DIAZ DAEMONETTES!

I'm sure that 3rd introduced Tau?

I started in second edition and it is still playable. The characters are very powerful and (almost) infinitely customisable.. The vehicle damage tables have some hilarious in-game results. The psychic phase is a brutal metagame. Close combat is epic and drawn out, especially when you have the likes of Dante vs Kharne. You get some very cool random objectives and strategy cards (like planet strike strategems). Grenades are great fun. Orks blow themselves up. Grey Knights are OP Tau don't exist

AND

You get to use a D20

Half my brain still plays 40K 2nd Ed. style. It is the only edition I would (and do...) go back to. 3rd Ed. killed it, but was saved by the Armageddon world wide campaign. Now if GW brought back something like that, I'd be happy. It extended the narrative, added new armies and miniatures, got people playing games and talking about them. You really felt like the whole universe was grinding forward. 4th Ed. brought back some of the cool that it's predecessor destroyed, but it was like the first pancake (the first pancake is never quite right, but you have to make it). Just too many exploits in the rules. 5th seemed to clean most of this up and was a very tight set of rules. You could play a very tactical game, knowing quite well what your opponent was capable of. I feel that 6th has blown the whole game right open. Options for movement are excellent, i.e. snap shotting heavy weapons on the move, but I hate flyers.

We have seen a lot of changes since RT, but the game has always been fun to play for me. Except maybe that first 3rd Ed. game....

Truth be told I loved 5th edition. It had a couple of glaring flaws that hull points (or even just the inclusion of Necrons - which completely disrupted the meta when they arrived), the new psychic powers, and new wound allocation would have fixed.

Wound allocation to stop things like Paladin-spam, psychic powers for buffing tyranids mainly, and hull-points/crons for fixing the cheap as chips parking lot problem. Games-Workshop could have even given close combat weapons AP values and added overwatch and that would have been fine too. A slight buff to shooting and a slight nerf to Close-Combat could have rounded out nicely.

Tbh I found 2nd too slow, and too complex. It worked superbly for Necromunda, though, which remains my favourite GW game of all time.

3rd was a massive change. I loved the change, the first time I played was a game with my brother, and we were both floored with how fast the game played and how much more it felt like you could achieve.

I skipped 4th. Years later when I came back to playing in 5th, it felt familiar to the 3rd ed changes. I still enjoyed the game but I dunno, it just didn't really capture my attention for some reason.

I definitely find 6th edition to be the most enjoyable for me. It feels to me like 5th ed ++ in some ways. The only thing I don't really like about 6th is it feels a bit TOO deadly, in the sense that it seems to me that too many games are decided by either tabling or so close to tabling it's basically the same thing. In those games, it kind of feels like the mission objectives are almost a waste of time, which is a bit disappointing. I'd personally prefer tabling/near tabling to be a pretty rare occurrance. We do use a lot of terrain in my group, so I'm not sure why our games turn out that way.

The only problem i have with 6th is the random charge distances and the fact that having assault grenades doesnt give your opponent "Ld test to overwatch" which would have made things a little better for my poor little wyches, though generally it is great fun and the randomness is funny.

I started the first week or so of 5th edition. Played many many games, but never really go into the tournament scene much. In an overwhelming majority, I find 6th to be a HUGE improvement over 5th. Unfortunately, the few hiccups aren't so much hiccups, more like awkward mid-sentence vomiting.

1: The challenge rules to me just seem to ruin some armies, while giving others an extra turn of "ha ha you can't paste me yet!!"

2: Random charge ranges are fine, but there needs to be a way to get a more reliable distance. Perhaps if one didn't shoot in the shooting phase, allow them to charge 6+d6, or add x distance to their 2d6 charge

3: Fliers. ... I understand that GW wanted/needed to sell more ginormous kits, but seriously, your strategy is to make them ridiculously difficult to drop for most armies that were before. Also failing to address the cost disparity between the old "I'm a weird skimmer" fliers and the new 'actual' fliers. 130 pts for a 12/12/10 triple-lascannon murdermachine of doom that can be taken in squadrons of 3 -vs- 180 pts for 11/11/10 single lascannon/HB/6 mediocre missiles?? I understand that going back and changing point costs in old codicies is something GW is against, but seriously, the fact that I wish tyranids could take guard even as desperate allies so I can field a trio of vendettas is telling.

4: ALL OF THE RANDOM TABLES. Before there were 2 required to play. Game type/table type. Now there is Warlord table>Table type> Game type> Random objectives > Random Terrain> Random weather> Random Tree> Random Psychic powers> Random Random table ad nausium.
The whole purpose (imo) of a random table should be to give the player the change at a big reward, but there is the decided chance of garbage or nothing. Ever notice that every codex that has a built-in warlord table NEVER uses the BRB tables?
Final point -> A couple random tables is fine, especially if they are avoidable. Forcing both players to randomly roll how many random tables they need to randomly roll on is tedious.


Those are literally the 4 things I don't like about 6th edition. Everything else is sensibly done as long as there isn't an individual in your area who tries to exploit the different definitions of the word "the."