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For the most part electronics have to be replaced over time due to ware and lack of replacement parts. Boardgames are different. Some may keep playing their old edition, other may change because the local game store is the only place they can play. However it is silly to expect them to be happy about shelling out more money every time a new set comes out.

Does pancake edition count? . Not a fan of 6th, grew weary of 5th, and haven't played 1-4. But I fell in love with pancake edition the moment I saw it, and I wish they used more rules from that for 6th.

Started off the tail end of 3rd edition, so didn't have much experience in that. 5th had slightly better core rules than 4th, but 4th had better codices. 6th is awesome. Probably an equal toss up between 6th and 4th for me.

pretre wrote:

a 20-man squad of Wolfguard Terminators all armed with assault cannons;
a dreadnought armed with 4 assault cannons;
every character in the codex for a 1,000 point battle
of course, all of their miniatures are usually unpainted, too

To be fair, this isn't a good example at all about why 3rd edition wasn't perfect. Maybe the 2nd edition Space Wolf Codex overrode the rulebook (I started W40K on the release date for the 3rd edition Space Wolf Codex and have been playing them ever since), but in 3rd edition you had to have the opponents permission to even use special characters. They weren't something you could just bring and play all the time and most tourneys I participated in back then didnt' allow them either. Its one of the reasons I try to avoid them still.


I personally thought 5th edition was excellent other than the strength of vehicles. I did miss the old way sweeping advances worked and being able to charge out of a Rhino (speaking of overpowered tactics...) but it was better than 3rd and 4th. 6th edition so far... Well the rules are written poorly in some cases, worse than in 5th I mean, but overall its excellent and very fun. Its a lot to take in and a little early to tell but nothing major has put me off. I expect it will be at least as good as 5th.

I just wish Challenges worked better.

Best rules: Honestly, 6th. Not perfect, but more balanced than any other edition, as the statements of others seem to suggest.

Best fluff: 3rd edition. I imagine I will get some hate for this, but I like excessive grim darkness. It only seems like a joke if that's how you choose to think about it.

For me RT, it’s the only edition to do Orks right, so much depth and character to them. And as yet the only edition I could field the warband that got me playing 40k in the first place, Ork Genestealer Hybrids. I bought the only Ork hybrid model you ever made GW, curse you

6th is great though, it works well. Its better than the previous 3 editions, so no complaints.

Still no Ork Hybrids

Howard A Treesong wrote:2nd edition, when games took longer with fewer figures, it was wacky stuff. It stopped being fun after that and heading towards bigger and bigger games with less customisation and where increasingly expensive models are just put though a meat grinder. I wonder what a modern 2000 point army would be under 2nd edition? Given that a basic 10 man marine squad was 350 points, IIRC.

Well here is a 2nd edition army I played with the other day. You could probably extrapolate from there.

Wolf Lord: Thunder Hammer Storm Shield Terminator armor

Iron Priest: Plasma gun

Rune Priest

10 Grey Hunters: 2x Chainsword 3x Power Axe 2x Power Fist 3x Power Sword
Rhino

10 Blood Claws:

Squad 1: Jump Packs 4x Power Swords 1x Power Fist Melta Bombs

Squad 2: 2x Power Swords 1x Power Fist 1x Power Axe 1x Chainsword
Razorback Lascannon/twin Plasma

5 Wolf Guard Terminators: 2x Cyclone/Storm Bolter 2x Dual Lightning Claws 1x Chainfist/Storm Bolter

Predator: Twin Lascannons 2x Heavy Bolters

Dreadnought: Assault Cannon, Lightning Claw/Heavy Flamer

Trench-Raider wrote:

English Assassin wrote:3rd edition; the point at which this game began to actually work.

With all due respect, you are out of your mind. 3rd edition was actually a big step back for the game.

Oh it was actually was it? Care to elaborate with some less subjective examples as to why the first instance of a comparatively streamlined, balanced ruleset was so manifestly inferior to the era of virus grenades, random equipment tables, outrageously powerful characters, etc? Because it's certainly not as obvious to me as you seem to think it should be...

3rd and 4th editions easily had the most additional content added to the game for players to make use of beyond the stock off-the-shelf armies. That was the era of the awesome campaign codex books like Codex Armageddon and Codex Eye of Terror, which each let players have access to 3-4 additional variant armies (and EoT was responsible for spawning the Black Templars as a non-vanilla chapter, by the way, and reintroducing Speed Kults for the Orks back into the game).

VDR rules made for awesomely fun conversions (as easy as they were to abuse, they were just as easy to have well-balanced fun with. Hell, the flyer rules were complained about as being broken- but some of those "broken rules" form the basis of current flyers), and also the fun mini-games like 40K in 40 minutes (later becoming Combat Patrol) and Kill Team scenarios also came out then.

Also add in all the supporting material published in White Dwarf Issues (those years being far and beyond the "golden years" of the magazine for giving us more content and articles versus being an ad pamphlet) and then later in the Chapter Approved annuals. Also, it's when Forgeworld first started.

There were problems, obviously. But I think they were outweighed by the good. Hell, even the armies and rules back then that everyone screamed were broken have been completely obliterated by the power creep of these last few years.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

a 20-man squad of Wolfguard Terminators all armed with assault cannons;
a dreadnought armed with 4 assault cannons;
every character in the codex for a 1,000 point battle

I can't possibly see how any of that was legally fielded to even be used as an example.

I was just listing a broken complaint. These kind of conplainta are often base on emotion and not fact dreadnought was probably vdr though.

Eldarain wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:2nd edition, when games took longer with fewer figures, it was wacky stuff. It stopped being fun after that and heading towards bigger and bigger games with less customisation and where increasingly expensive models are just put though a meat grinder. I wonder what a modern 2000 point army would be under 2nd edition? Given that a basic 10 man marine squad was 350 points, IIRC.

Well here is a 2nd edition army I played with the other day. You could probably extrapolate from there.

Wolf Lord: Thunder Hammer Storm Shield Terminator armor

Iron Priest: Plasma gun

Rune Priest

10 Grey Hunters: 2x Chainsword 3x Power Axe 2x Power Fist 3x Power Sword
Rhino

10 Blood Claws:

Squad 1: Jump Packs 4x Power Swords 1x Power Fist Melta Bombs

Squad 2: 2x Power Swords 1x Power Fist 1x Power Axe 1x Chainsword
Razorback Lascannon/twin Plasma

5 Wolf Guard Terminators: 2x Cyclone/Storm Bolter 2x Dual Lightning Claws 1x Chainfist/Storm Bolter

Predator: Twin Lascannons 2x Heavy Bolters

Dreadnought: Assault Cannon, Lightning Claw/Heavy Flamer

I think the above translates to roughly 1600 points in 6th if all the wargear could be taken but a lot of the squad upgrades can't be taken now (if made legal for 6th by dropping jump packs and extra power weapons it'd be about 1360 points, I think).

So perhaps a 25% 'inflation' in models required to bring the list up to 2000 points at 6th ed prices.

2nd for me it was when i started its only problem was length of games i play 2nd every now and again with friends just for a good laugh

For me it's gotta be 2nd edition. While I did enjoy the roleplaying aspect of Rogue Trader I feel there were better Role Playing Games that I could have used to get the same results and just change the fluff to represent the Imperium.

The great thing about 2nd edition to me was that it was clearly the edition of crazy random things in the game (I see they are bringing some of that back with flyers crashing into stuff when they die, and the random objectives and terrain). War is not orderly in any fashion and I like my games to reflect that.

Also Squats were in 2nd edition and they have been one of my most favorite armies since then.