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A friend of mine suggested we try oldhammer. Apparantly 4th edition didn't have all the crazy power creep, allies and flyers and superheavies etc, was a lot more melee friendly, and had abstracted Line of Sight.

I'm wondering what dakka thinks of that edition; did it have any big problems? Which armies were OTT at that point and which needed a fix.

The issue I did hear of was that vehicles were a bit weak - but that could be fixed easily by incorporating the 7th edition vehicle rules. And that got me thinking - if you were to take rules from each edition to make a single best one, which rules would those be? Likewise with the codexes - people wax fondly about the "3.5 edition Chaos" codex, so obviously in the past some codexes were a lot cooler than they are now. Which of those are the superstar dexes?

 Dakkamite wrote:
I'm wondering what dakka thinks of that edition; did it have any big problems? Which armies were OTT at that point and which needed a fix.

Tau and Eldar could be pretty tough, with how the rules for skimmers worked, and you constantly say threads in the tactics forum asking 'how do I beat tri-lith Necrons' or 'Iron Warriors are kicking my can, need help!'

If i was to custom hammer.

1) Change from i move my army then you do to unit by unit. (mitigates alpha striking a lot (which i hate))

2) add back Abstract LOS and add Height bands (Forests are high band one and you can shoot at something behind it if its tall like a knight or always if its a flyer or something like that)

3) Fix vehicles ether a) Change them to T models and change up rules for melta and poison type things or b) Change the glance pen rules. something like a glance lets you roll on the table but doesnt take a HP off except on the higher numbers like immoblize and wep, then pen takes a HP as well as rolling. this should make vehicles not as strong as 5th edition parking lots but wont be HPed out as easily as it is now.

4) Magic needs to change sooo bad. a higher lv psyker should be able to cast easier than a mook. should go back to 5th LD based casting. perhaps LD+ Caster levels to reach a number.

5) Mass changes to USR. (personally think Concussive should happen on hit and not to wound (aka think of a mace hitting your face. you got hit but didnt get hurt besides the massive ringing in your ear) also think ordance should at least get concussive.

6) after all that, then go about fixing all the codex after the base rules have been set.

Custom hammer works well.

Honestly we dont have any of the problems i read about. But it seems far easier to house rule things than retrofit everything to 4th.

Id do it but my group probably wont play it

I don't know about customhammer, but definitely house rules help these situations.

Also if you're looking for balance I feel like when all the players use CAD or some sort of standard FOC the game works better.

Was hoping an earlier edition might get us a more playable game without needing to house rule everything. I love houserules and use them all the time but only sparingly and when its absolutely needed - 7th edition 40k needs too many custom fixes for my liking.

I suppose it would be easier to just flat out homerule in the stuff I liked the sound of from 4th ;
~Abstract LoS and no more meaningless swiss cheese terrain
~No challenges (this comes from playing Orks, who get wrecked by Challenges in a manner that completely wrecks them as a melee army)
~Removing restrictions on melee; "no melee from reserves but deep strike melta/flamer up the arse is fine" and "no consolidation into melee even if the enemy is blobbed up 1" apart in the corner behind an aegis suck on that extra round of shooting"
~Controlling player chooses casualties as opposed to casualties from the front.

The last one in particular though I'm not sure how you would resolve it as I don't have the 4th edition book. If a unit of dudes with different saves took hits from various AP, could they just stick the nasty AP hits on the trash dudes and tank the other hits on good saves? Or did they have a mechanic for preventing that?

To make the game better, at this point simply fixing things like line of sight isn't going to work. Go back and play a game with the old codices too...you won't find grav, bladestorm, or TL S7 heavy D6+1. AP2 is rare at range. You won't be able to take heavy weapons on every single unit in the squad and particularly powerful units will have a "0-1" qualifier. You won't be able to take allies for fill the holes in your army, and stuff will generally be more expensive. You can't strip hull points from vehicles AND immobilize them.

In short, the game today is a massive shoot-fest where everything hits on 2s, wounds on 2s, and half of it ignores armor and/or cover. If not, it's twin-linked and rends with a huge number of shots. The old version simply didn't have as much raw firepower.

 Dakkamite wrote:
Was hoping an earlier edition might get us a more playable game without needing to house rule everything. I love houserules and use them all the time but only sparingly and when its absolutely needed - 7th edition 40k needs too many custom fixes for my liking.

I suppose it would be easier to just flat out homerule in the stuff I liked the sound of from 4th ;
~Abstract LoS and no more meaningless swiss cheese terrain
~No challenges (this comes from playing Orks, who get wrecked by Challenges in a manner that completely wrecks them as a melee army)
~Removing restrictions on melee; "no melee from reserves but deep strike melta/flamer up the arse is fine" and "no consolidation into melee even if the enemy is blobbed up 1" apart in the corner behind an aegis suck on that extra round of shooting"
~Controlling player chooses casualties as opposed to casualties from the front.

The last one in particular though I'm not sure how you would resolve it as I don't have the 4th edition book. If a unit of dudes with different saves took hits from various AP, could they just stick the nasty AP hits on the trash dudes and tank the other hits on good saves? Or did they have a mechanic for preventing that?

The way to do it is to select a weapon and resolve each weapon in turn. Whoever rolls the save, be it trash dude or storm shield dude die if they fail.

So, I put the plasma shots onto the space marines, and tank the AP3 flamer hits on the terminator character?

I'm no vet, but I think 7th isn't half bad, it just the codices that are too much.

6th ed codices weren't that bad, and some of the 7th ones aren't either. I'm talking about the lower tier armies here. If you can avoid the cheesecake the game becomes much more enjoyable. Not saying that competition can't be fun too, but both players have to want that. See the Friend Nuetering thread for an example...

If you can avoid that it's playable. I intend on playing 7th with older books, avoiding crazy CAD shenanigans and all that. Sure there are rules loopholes but for my purposes, these things can be worked out fairly and consistently. Maybe I'll just get out a chisel and stone and make some addendums.

I enjoy 4th, the codex' and the main rulebook balance well. Vehicles did tend to be on the weak side, but armour 14 was still tough to crack. Some complained that Wave Serpents were crazy, but even at the height of 4th we never had a problem with it in my area, so mileage varies depending on players.

As far as army books go the only one that was OTT was the Chaos 3.5 but that was only the noise marines and damonetts. An all sleneesh list was a pain to deal with. The rest of the dex was pretty good. The 4th ed chaos book was a little more tame.

When my friends an I get together 4th adapts well to some of the 5th ed codexes. Armies like Blood Angeles and Dark Eldar were behind the curve in 4th. It works well just make sure the whole group is ok with it.

 Dakkamite wrote:
So, I put the plasma shots onto the space marines, and tank the AP3 flamer hits on the terminator character?

Pretty much, but each model in the unit is assigned a single hit before you can assign a second to the any model.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:
So, I put the plasma shots onto the space marines, and tank the AP3 flamer hits on the terminator character?

Pretty much, but each model in the unit is assigned a single hit before you can assign a second to the any model.

And if the opponent caused more hits on the unit then it has models the opponent may choose 1 model to role its save separately.

There was a poll about people's favorite edition a while back and 4th and 5th were easily the most popular accounting for over 50% of the votes, maybe close to 60% don't remember exactly, with 5th being slightly more popular. I started in 3rd and stopped in 5th. I do not like what 6th and 7th have done to the game. Really seems like a different game now. 4th was my favorite. I thought it was a great game then despite not being perfect. Area terrain rules were great. You could actually hide stuff and it mattered where units deployed because fields of fire were actually limited.

 Dakkamite wrote:
Was hoping an earlier edition might get us a more playable game without needing to house rule everything. I love houserules and use them all the time but only sparingly and when its absolutely needed - 7th edition 40k needs too many custom fixes for my liking.

I suppose it would be easier to just flat out homerule in the stuff I liked the sound of from 4th ;
~Abstract LoS and no more meaningless swiss cheese terrain
~No challenges (this comes from playing Orks, who get wrecked by Challenges in a manner that completely wrecks them as a melee army)
~Removing restrictions on melee; "no melee from reserves but deep strike melta/flamer up the arse is fine" and "no consolidation into melee even if the enemy is blobbed up 1" apart in the corner behind an aegis suck on that extra round of shooting"
~Controlling player chooses casualties as opposed to casualties from the front.

The last one in particular though I'm not sure how you would resolve it as I don't have the 4th edition book. If a unit of dudes with different saves took hits from various AP, could they just stick the nasty AP hits on the trash dudes and tank the other hits on good saves? Or did they have a mechanic for preventing that?

4th edition, my favorite edition, had some truly horrifying imbalances.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't skimmers wholly unassaultable back then? Or was it merely that you hit them only on a six if they'd moved at all the previous turn?

Fourth was a terribly broken edition thst boiled down to a handful of winningest builds with everything else being pointless.

Iron Warriors. Dear god, they'd make fifth ef grey Knights or any current power build blush.

 morganfreeman wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't skimmers wholly unassaultable back then? Or was it merely that you hit them only on a six if they'd moved at all the previous turn?

I don't think you could assault them at all. It's what made the "Fish of Fury" tactic so stupid and annoying in the first place, because you couldn't just assault the damn tank. But I don't really remember, and I don't actually have my 4th edition rulebook anymore so I can't check.

 Sidstyler wrote:

 morganfreeman wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't skimmers wholly unassaultable back then? Or was it merely that you hit them only on a six if they'd moved at all the previous turn?

I don't think you could assault them at all. It's what made the "Fish of Fury" tactic so stupid and annoying in the first place, because you couldn't just assault the damn tank. But I don't really remember, and I don't actually have my 4th edition rulebook anymore so I can't check.

If fish of fury was in 4th ed, then yeah you couldn't assault them. I'm just trying to remember if the fish were a 4th or 5th ed thing.. But I do believe they were fourth.

I have my 4th ed rule book bumming around, I'll check it tomorrow.

Fish of Fury was 4th edition. You could assault the skimmer, you just needed 6s to hit.