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Just fix Overwatch and 2nd Edition "2.5" will be good to go!

 Alpharius wrote:
Just fix Overwatch and 2nd Edition "2.5" will be good to go!

What about Vortex and Virus grenades? I seem to remember those being a large problem in 2nd.

Also, found out the only things I'm missing from my copy of 2nd is a few of the Psychic Templates and Datafaxes.

After looking over the rules, the brief while that I did, I concluded that the 2.5 would be made easier if some of the fire rules were gotten rid of, like continuous fire or whatever its called. And then fix close combat, without bastardizing it.... somehow.

Potentially add universal templates? Ideas?

So it seems so far the things people have problems with in 2nd Edition are as follows...

- Overwatch.
- Refine Close Combat.
- Balance Vortex Grenades and Virus Grenades.
- Removal of "cards" from the game.
- Conversion to modern templates (to make it easier for players who don't have the oldschool templates or good printers).

Anything else?

Marik law I like cards, for vehicles everything else can have a listing or something. Like a wargear section, a psionic section etc.
keep custom vehicles
nerf the chainfist
I like the fact that shooting and combat are so utterly intimate, but close combat is hell (so I presume, from what I've read)

Mechanically how does multiple dice work? Does it work well? (D20+d6+10 etc.)

Definitely work on the stuff that is no longer availible (templates special dice etc.)

I liked the cards, one of my favorite parts of 2nd.

aapch, all the "special dice" still exist. The artillery/jam die is still in Fantasy and the rest were dice that were/are fairly common D&D/RPG dice. Hell, the only difference between the dice we get now and then was they took out the Artillery die for 40K sets.

Oh I didn't know about the dice. Well in that case, keep it

I just want to play lol.

Its expensive to get all the 2nd ed stuff though.
So far, has anybody made a fan version of 2nd?

I dont know if its is still available free online.
But there used to be 'The Battle Bible' for 40k 2nd ed.
Just the rules and codexes, but without cards, pictures etc.

I found link to it on Scribd, but I sure wish someone had a copy so I don't have to delve through dodgy file-sharing sites, and in the case of Scribd- pay a fee to download.

I found this link.Is this one free?
www.4shared.com/...K/Warhammer_40000_-_2nd_Edition_.html

 adamsouza wrote:
The only thing I didn't really like about 2nd edition was how hand to hand combat was resolved. The Better troop pretty much always slaughtered the other side without them ever getting to strike back.

We typically use to play it growing up as a 1:1 melee. In other words we are throwing figures against figures - not so much in the Fantasy tradition of looking for a Battlescore.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I found link to it on Scribd, but I sure wish someone had a copy so I don't have to delve through dodgy file-sharing sites, and in the case of Scribd- pay a fee to download.

Here's a link of the 1.51 that I uploaded and helped work on. It's completely free to download.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/45857409/Warhammer-40k-Battle-Bible-1-51

Also, Sustained Fire dice are fine. I can certainly understand changing the 2nd edition melee combat rules to the 6th edition ones since it tends to play a bit faster.

Wow fantastic stuff so far. Glad to see this thread has still been getting some traffic up til now. I'm actually in the process of reverse engineering the Dark Eldar codex from 3rd edition to 2nd and found this thread. If I get a chance to playtest some of the stuff I have so far I'll post it here I guess.

Interesting that some other people out there feel like I do about Warhammer. My brothers and I learned to play 40K in the Rogue Trader days in England ... then brought the game home with us when we moved back to the US and taught all of our friends. Getting mail order boxes from the UK because there was literally no place to buy GW products in the US was pretty cool. Later on when second edition came out we had a pretty big group by then that would play the game regularly with us. It was one of the coolest times of my young childhood.

When 3rd edition came out there just seemed to be something wrong with the game. Individual units didn't matter anymore, everything was so dumbed down and simplified that the models might of well have been lego men. Not to mention how proud of themselves they were that you could suddenly "play an average length game with every model you own at once". ie - buy more crap! Hint hint - We made the game so simple and fast you have to triple the number of models you need to even play! - What a joke. Combine that with the ever skyrocketing GW prices and my brothers and all of our friends just stopped playing.

Fast forward a few years ... or like 15 ... and we've all started playing 40K again. Just like before it's the second edition rules. In fact just two weeks ago I had all the guys over for a two day campaign that focused on small battles and taking territory to get points (hard to do when people have kids, jobs etc. but totally worth it). In fact the entire campaign came down to my last Ork Bigboss needing to kill two Chaos cultists with his custom shoota to finish the detachment off. Which would of resulted in my brother and his team loosing the game and me and my team winning ... two days of playing Warhammer games and it all comes down to a single roll of the dice ... I throw the sustained fire dice ... and my bigboss promptly jams his gun, my brother and his allies do a running victory dance around the house to celebrate, and me and my team loose.

That's the kind of stuff that made the 2nd edition of Warhammer so fun, individual models can determine the outcome of the entire game. Overwatch, psychic powers, wargear cards, hit locations on vehicles etc. etc. added to the flavor. I can see though why GW did what it did with 3rd edition, the game really had become "hero hammer" so to speak. Having an Imperial Assassin fighting an Eldar Avatar in the middle of the battlefield every game got old after a while. That's why my group of friends and I made some house rules that we felt fixed most of the problems with the game. If you just limit the special characters and wargear, and get back to having more basic squads, the game is significantly more balanced. Which is what I was wishing for with the 3rd edition of the game before they butchered it by fundamentally changing the entire way Warhammer is played top to bottom. Anyway this pretty much sums up the list of "house rules" we use to play more balanced games of 2nd edition:

- Games under 1,000 points (or even 1,500 sometimes) ignore the requirement of army commanders and you may select any character model to lead the army instead. Seriously why would a farseer show up to lead 200 points of Eldar Guardians?

- Wargear cards are used by permission only - ie you have to show your opponent the wargear card when picking out your army and ask if you can use it. You would be amazed at how seldom we see virus and vortex grenades in our games lol.

- Special Characters are not allowed unless playing a special scenario type game. We consider anything from the Assassin codex part this ban as well.

- Strategy cards are only used for games over 1,000 points. Mission cards are still used for games under 1,000 points but the victory points for meeting the conditions are halved.

- The limit on psykers is set before armies are selected. Both players must agree on what level of psyker you can buy and how many of them. We use one level per 250 points as a rule of thumb. A level 2 psyker for a 600 point army just feels right.

- Troops in most of our games are a required 50% of the points instead of 25% (I think this was mentioned above).

In the next few days if I have time I post what I've got so far about the 2nd edition dark elder codex, and if I ever get around to scanning it the Gretchin Codex I made years ago when I was a kid - "Warbands of the great Gobbo: Gretchin Kingdoms and other Small Green Oddities". If you want an army with character this is it. I based it off a fondness of Gretchin I had. There was a brief mention of "Gretchin Kingdoms" in the old Rogue Trader book that talked about whole empires (albeit small ones) of Gretchin in the 40K universe. I worked off the stats for gretchin there and the gretchin champions in the Ork Codex. They're fun to play, but like you'd expect the biggest challenge is getting them to stay and fight without running away ... anyway good times.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I wish you luck. Feel free to check out my own project, in which I adapted most of the current 40k factions and much of their wargear to Necromunda rules. Could be a useful springboard. Feel free to use anything you like.

(link in sig)

Necromunda is starting up in my area, and I was going to do something like this as I don't like the existing (fan) Ork rules. Good to see someone else did the legwork! Will definitely give these rules a go

Just played a 6 hour 2000pt game last night Ork vs Ultra 2nd edition. WOW! I forgot how much of the rule set has been totally abandoned over the years. I Played 2nd edition from 92 till it changed to 3rd then I didn't pick up a set of dice or paint a model till 2012. Been playing 6th ever since it came out. I like 6th a lot. I hated have to take my power axes, hand flamers, and plasma pistols of my grey hunters. I hope this project is still alive.

 Jihadnik wrote:
Does that mean a return to sustained fire dice too? You can keep those, although I'd love to be able to throw grenades again!

6th Ed allows grenade throwing to a degree at least, I don't think I was even born when 2nd Ed came out so idk how it worked then

Nice to see that other people have jumped on the 2nd ed fan train since we started this thread. For our part we have named 2014 the year of 40K 2.5 so we actually do something about it and are adding to our tweaks and changes document with each passing game. My hope is that alongside some games of traditional 2nd Edition we will be able to run some games of 2.5 on Tabletop Day though they are likely to be small and not too ambitious.

For my part I think the cards are part of the charm of 2nd Ed but I am a massive nostalgia freak. Write ups of our 2nd ed adventures will appear on http://www.conclaveofhar.com/ over the coming months.

[EXALT +1] This is fantastic. I am going to revisit 2nd Ed. myself with some buddies over the next couple of months. I'm looking forward to seeing this project (and others) move forward. The good old days are coming back.

There are groups scattered all over the world (which I have access to/am part of) that never stopped playing 2nd after it went out of print, our group (of 35) in particular doesn’t play any other editions but there are quite a few people in quite a few different countries (including regular input from some current and ex GW devs) and I have full sets of the 'current' 2nd ed rules as they have been expanded over the 17-ish years since it went out of print.

Not trying to supersede any rules anyone may have worked hard on (we still house rule some of the current 2nd ed rules too) but the current 2nd ed game has balanced rules for titans (up to reaver/phantoms (and the tyranid dominatrix) being the biggest, warlords etc are still to come in a later expansion) super heavies flak units, aircraft (including aerial dogfights) supreme commanders (basically balanced strategy cards you buy on a general) and includes all current 6th ed armies as well as full codexes for a few extra like Terran guard (basically a custodian/sisters of silence force) Squats, Adeptus Mechanicus, and the Imperial Inquisition (all Ordos’, sisters, deathwatch and assassins)

If you are interested, Email me at alpha.dominatus@gmail.com and I can forward the documentation & codexes to anyone interested. We have battle reports from tournaments that have been run (and full tournaments in battle report form) if you wanted to read over some battles too. The rules are extremely balanced and robust and many a competitive tournament or campaign has been successfully run on them, the better players usually win, even if they don’t end up with their armies of choice for the tournament.

2nd edition is great fun! and it is always get to see people interested in going back to it, so I thought I would at least give anyone interested in the option for a fully developed ruleset designed over great many years by a very experienced community (and a few professional GW people too).

2.5 for the win!

Impressed. I recently(ish) played a game of 2ed at the local wargaming club. This club consisted of only adult members.

I think we disturbed some of the others with how much fun we were having playing the 2ed rules.

There was much laughter.

Australia has quite a 2ed following on the wargamerau forum. FYI

I stumbled upon this thread from a web search, and thought I would offer some files of 2nd Ed templates for those who need replacements or never had 2nd Ed.

These are simple B&W images for those with only limited printer capability. If any are interested in color, let me know.

The various flame templates are the same dimensions as the originals, but I rounded the small end (like the newer plastic template) rather than using the original pointy end.

The double HF template is described in SoB Codex and originally published in White Dwarf. I added Twin Hand Flamer for Seraphim and Twin Flamer for Chaos/Heresy/Pre-Heresy players.

The Inferno Gun templates are for the Hellhound mechanic (Hvy Flamer + Artillery Die). The Knight Inferno circle is the same diameter as the end of the Hvy Flamer for Knight-size units vs. ground targets.

I also have XL templates for Inquisitor Titans as well as specialty templates (like D-Cannon and Plasma) if anyone is interested.

The images should be US letter size 8.5x11, the tick marks along the edges are at 1" intervals.
Print full size, do not shrink-to-fit
The 1-1/2" Blast circle will get cut off on some printers, so you may need to crop the image, or just use the 2" templates instead.

Jay

Just getting back to 2nd edition gaming myself after a 13 year absence from 3rd edition.

I love the datafaxes, the characters, the psychic phase, etc.

I only have/had 2 issues with 2nd edition. The characters died to easily from heavy weapon fire. The games were dominated by heavy weapons.

The super over the top hand to hand of uber characters. It was impossible to stop some of them.

So I was thinking that 3rd edition hth moved in the right direction but dumbed the game down too much and was still complicated.

I threw this 'alpha playtest' idea for 2nd edition hth together.

example:

All models in base to base contact....it could be 2 or it could be 15+

You could try to only have 1 on 1 battles or have your models all touching to get a larger 'linked' chain of fighting. ( depends on the tactics which way you would want it)

So instead of 2nd EDITION clunky 1 vs a mob with additive +WS and + attack dice.

the HtH formula would be:

Number of Models(same WS)(plus other allied models) + number of attack dice = result (same modifiers from 2nd edition for fumbles etc) Take the result minus your opponents WS = the number of hits you made....allocate 1 hit per model, then 2 hits per model til all have been allocated.

Characters always attack on their own.
Both sides would get none or some hits with this playtest rule.

1 Hive Tyrant WS 9 vs 5 Marines WS4 + 1 Dire Avenger Exarch WS 6:

Hive tyrant is 1 + 6 dice vs marine(chosen target)[could swap some dice vs exarch] lets say he gets 2 sixes and 1 fumble. So he is 1+ 6+1=8 minus WS 4= 4 hits on Marines
5 Marines are 5(plus 1 for exarch) + 5 dice vs Tyrant ....say they get a 5 and no fumbles on roll. So they are 6+5+1 for tyrant fumble=12 minus WS 9 equal 3 hits
1 Exarch vs Tyrant is 1(plus 5 for marines) + 3 dice with roll of a 4 so 6 +4 =10 minus 9 is 1 hit

Why do this?
Keeps the super characters from getting so many kills in a turn.
Permits everyone a chance to get some hits in
Is faster to roll once for each group or character rather than a bog down mathevent like 2nd ed hth

Problems arise with Howling Banshee masks, Death Masks and other odd items.

thoughts?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
not sure how the various parries would work in this playtest rules?

My friends and I have been working on a 2nd edition revision, and while we haven't published any of it yet, the blog I've done up does have almost all the 2nd ed. resources anybody will need if you're getting into it, or back into it.

http://projectanvil.blogspot.com/

Click on the resources tab and you'll find downloads for all of the various decks, the original black book, etc. We're also re-doing all of the datafaxes to printable PDFs, etc. We have nice printable templates as well ( just print and laminate and you should be good).

We're doing cheat-sheets for proper 2nd ed. rules and we'll introduce our own variations as we finish play-testing them. So far we have similar goals:

1) remove tiny useless rules/streamline slightly
2) remove IGOUGO activation/turn sequence
3) redo close combat completely
4) change overwatch

etc.

Also good luck.
The 2nd wasn´t perfect but in many ways better than everthing that followed.

Some changes i would make:
- drop the to-Hit-bonus/malus for distance
- drop the sustained fire dice and convert them (dice = 1.5 shots rounding up): 1 dice = 2 shots; 2 dice = 3 shots; 3 dice = 5 shots
- use the close combat rules from 7th

Keep the old blast sizes and cover rules!

Virus grenades were banned in our games, but we kept vortex.

Not my system but something I nicked from warseer. Works pretty nice as alternative h2h and averages about the same. Harlequin holofields don't work with this though so if those would be involved time to use original one.

WS + d6 + 2 for each parry +1 for each additional model after the first +1 for the model with the higher number of attacks.