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I started throwing Combi-Flamers on anything that could take them because I was predicting Genestealer Cults would be absurdly broken. Easy charges, the whole army cab be deployed wherever, and excellent rules. What they are in 9th is a startling 180° turn.

Pink Horrors - they would split into a new unit of Blues (with their own Psy rating and power), followed by Brimstones (again, with their own Psy rating and power)

With clever movement in your turn you could end up with a truly ridiculous number of Psyker units to fuel your summoning shenanigans (I liked burning chariots, they were surprisingly resilient!)

And to top it off, most people liked shooting at the horrors before charging them, which allowed you to deploy a unit of Blue Horrors as a screen against charging the Pinks (In 7th Ed, if you shot at a unit, you couldn't charge any other unit)


The other trick I liked was running the Iron Wolves formation. A -2 leadership to tankshocks. Basically you could spam Rhino's and run them up against whatever the opponent had. I made Thunder Cav run off the table! For extra cheese I included a Herald of Nurgle + Plague Bearers. The Herald had a -1 leadership bell. So with the number of tanks I had, I could make any non-vehicle unit run off the table without doing any shooting / close combat damage!

7th ed had insane balance issues, but it was also a time when GW didn't publish FAQs/Erratas or Chapter Approved to fix and balance things.
IMHO, the core rules were fine for the most part, the game was more complex, but in a good way. 8th ed streamlined everything and it was a good job overall, but it streamlined the rules a bit too much for my taste.

That said, the main issues in 7th were in the powercreep between codices, the long time between codices updates and the lack of rebalancing.

I remember playing against someone who ran a formation of 4 daemon princes that shared different god abilities. THAT WAS SO AWFUL. Unless you had anti-flier stuff they would run roughshod over your army ><. I remember I had the cheesiest space marine gladius and I was being stomped by that list.

 generalchaos34 wrote:
I remember playing against someone who ran a formation of 4 daemon princes that shared different god abilities. THAT WAS SO AWFUL. Unless you had anti-flier stuff they would run roughshod over your army ><. I remember I had the cheesiest space marine gladius and I was being stomped by that list.

As dumb as it was, I LOVED that formation.

Airborne Assault Formation filled with Meltaguns, as well as a Hellrain Brigade filled with Plasmaguns.

The aim was to simply shatter anything fast and/or powerful with constant special weapons fire. Keeping the Valkyries Zooming, meant that only AA weapons could truly engage them, and those weapons were quickly eliminated by the Hellrain.

I'm surprised that in this thread full of 7th edition horrible lists, units, and combos, no one has mentioned Eldar Warp Spiders. Little feths could just jump behind cover whenever they got shot at, effectively making them completely immune to shooting (and melee for the most part unless you refrained from shooting at them and making them jump). And their guns wounded vs. the Initiative stat and had Rending. I'm so happy they are garbage in 8th and 9th editions. feth. Those. Things.

Tau had some serious rotten cheese as well. I know, I played them back then. They had a super-formation that itself was not super broken but it could have a lot of broken stuff in it. The Optimized Stealth Cadre was there for shooting the back of enemy vehicles even if they were facing you, the Stormsurge was there for D-weapon and Stomp shenanigans, and of course the Riptide Wing. I only ran the Riptide Wing once (with borrowed Riptides as I didn't own 3 Riptides of my own until 8th), but it was one of the stronger things Tau could run. And of course, don't forget the Drone Net VX-1-0 and Drones getting a bunch of abilities (and a buff to their Ballistic Skill) literally for free.

D-weapons were a major pain in the butt too, able to just point and delete anything they looked at. And it seemed like Eldar got them on just about everything. Between D-weapon spam, Scatbikes, the aforementioned Warp Spiders, and Wraithknights, it's no wonder Eldar were the top dogs of 7th.

I could go on and on about all the cheese I encountered during my time in 7th, but it's late locally and I'm very tired.

I was taking a break from 40k at the time so I missed it, but what exactly was so bad about 6th that it was replaced within 2 years?

 Bosskelot wrote:
I was taking a break from 40k at the time so I missed it, but what exactly was so bad about 6th that it was replaced within 2 years?

The whole flying circus and screamer star mess come to mind. Challenges would not have wound spill over so a guardsmen blob could ignore squad leaders and ICs attacking them by feeding them one sergeant at a time. It also was the age of the taudar.

 Bosskelot wrote:
I was taking a break from 40k at the time so I missed it, but what exactly was so bad about 6th that it was replaced within 2 years?

Lots, but little than 7E actually addressed

6E and 7E for the most part might as well be the same edition, the allies chart got mixed up, some vehicle rules tweaked, flying stuff and Intercept changed/toned down, Formations got introduced, D weapons got slightly toned down from their 6E Escalation incarnations as GW started putting such weapons on stuff like Wraithguard, but honestly there was probably just as meaningful much core rules changes over 8ths lifespan as there was between 6th and 7th.

I'm pretty sure there were formations in 6th though they were more limited in number.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I'm pretty sure there were formations in 6th though they were more limited in number.

Yeah they came out at the very end with a couple of them (i think in Escalation? Might have been another book) just a few months before 7th hit, but hadnt been integrated into the core rules yet.

it was a bad time, with somewhat good results, forcing GW to change a bit to the better.

It also forcefully diversified the games locally played so there's that

Formations were out in force during the 6th edition, mostly silly little things (Nids got 15 mostly useless narrative formations in the Rising Leviathan series at the beginning of 2014), then the 7th came with the idiotic decurions for selected factions...

I played against Warp Spiders in a Killteam list. Literally didn't get to fire a shot, as the board was dense enough they were always next to LoS blocking cover to jump behind.