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So I haven't played since... fifth edition?... and I'm feeling that inkling to get back involved in the 40K realm.

I used to play Blood Angels, and wanted to get into IG and Orcs... I was browsing FW and GW and I saw a whole bunch of new choices. Can someone (or the lot of you) help me get my thumb back on the pulse of this game before I recklessly spend a bunch of money on the game?

I have a bunch of questions... but here's the ones that are still on my mind..

Do people generally enjoy 7th edition or do people prefer playing an older edition?
Do people mix and match armies a bunch?

I'm just gonna stop there and ask more questions as the hopeful replies come in.

Well, 7th is probably the most often played, however it is riddled with flaws and a lot of people only play it because nobody of their friends wanna play older editions.

What do you mean by mix and match armies a bunch?

Like how you can use two different armies.. I don't have the matrix in front of me but like, blood angels and IG.. or what is formally known as IG

Most people at my local clubs play 7th but that's more because they don't want their tactics to get rusty for Tournament play rather than because they really enjoy it over previous editions. Occasionaly we have games of 2nd or 4th edition.


I'll list some of the problems with 7th edition:

Flyers and super-heavies are now fairly normal in regular 40K games. In a way this is great for showing off your expensive models, but it also serves as a distraction to what the meta used to be like.

Hull points (like wounds for vehicles): Alot of people like them, but I think that they make armour feel too spongy. They make it harder to one-shot-kill yet easier to glance vehicles to death.

As I've mentioned in a previous thread, the core rules of 40K have gone down a path which is much more literal and model-based rather than the abstract unit-based rules which 4th and to a lesser extent 5th edition were made of.

Psyker powers seem more fluffy, but they're also needlessly complicated and randomised.


Having said that, it's still worth playing 40K as IMO it's still the best tabletop game and there's always people who play it at your local wargaming club.

mikewars85 wrote:

I have a bunch of questions... but here's the ones that are still on my mind..

Do people generally enjoy 7th edition or do people prefer playing an older edition?
Do people mix and match armies a bunch?

For the first question, 6th edition severely dented my enjoyment of the game, 7th ed (which was much like 6th but with the stupid ramped up to 11) killed it completely.

We've been tinkering with the 6th ed rules to try to fix things somewhat (allowing blasts to snap fire, moving back to owner-selects casualty removal, and completely ignoring formations).


For the second, for those people who do enjoy the current rules, the open-ness of the army selection system currently in play is often one of the drawcards, as it allows for much more customisation than previously. It's all down to the group you play with, really.



SDFarsights list of problems sums up a few of the major issues I have, but I would add Formations resulting in identical units having different rules with no clear way of distinguishing them from each other, random warlord abilities and the poor implementation of overwatch.

That, and the impossibility of keeping up with all of the rules, since they're all so fragmented now.

7th was actually alright, it's more the formations and stupid stuff they add in I think that makes it less enjoyable. Mean they can't seem to make up their minds if formations will be power based or be fluff based either which doesn't help the inconsistency that's already there with the armies that really don't even have the formations to compete with the big ones.

If playing against nice people its far better than 5th, if against competetive tourney type people, its probably worse.

Mix and matching armies is probably much more common now than in previous additions, due to the rise of Battle Brothers.

7th is a ton of fun, but can still be bogged down by rules messiness. That and formations/Lords of War in regular games have really screwed the power level of armies, so I'd advise to stick to playing for fun and not competitive games.

7th edition is plenty of fun, and its far from the worst age for 40k. In terms of options and armies, it is a true golden age, with everything from Genestealer cults to whole Imperial Knight armies taking to the field.

As you can see from the other responses though, the introduction of formations and detachments, not to mention a real glut of "universal special rules", has resulted in a game that can be very unwieldy.

To provide an example facing me - I have a Khornate Chaos space marine army. Kharn, Berserkers, etc. How do I field them?

1. I can use the Chaos Space Marine codex. This is a very old book, infamously underpowered versus Eldar and Tau level codexes.
2. I can use the 2014 advent calendar formation "Kharn's Butcher hoard" which gives mild benefits for fielding 8 units of berserkers with Kharn
3. I can use "Khorne Demonkin", a stand alone book with marine and demon elements, but no Kharn at all.
4. I can use the "Maelstrom of Gore" formation in Traitors hate, which is just like the Butcher hoard, but with different rules. (I think?)
5. I can use Traitor Legions, the new book, for the World Eaters. But, Maelstrom of Gore is a formation in this book as well, atop new rules for the World Eaters.

In every version, the special rules effecting the marines are different, even though the units are largely the same. Lets say I narrow it down, and decide to go with Traitor Legions. And, to keep it simple, I take a normal boring CAD like we had in 5th edition 40k. And, I just take ordinary chaos marines:

1. To comply with being World Eaters, they must have the Mark of Khorne. I need to look up and jot down what the Mark of Khorne does.
2. All units must be upgraded to Veterans of the Long War, for free. I need to look up and jot down what Veterans of the Long War does.
3. All units with Veterans of the Long War, now have Adamantium Will, Fearless, and Furious Charge. I need to look up what Adamantium Will, Fearless, and Furious Charge does.

Now that I have these 5 special rules in mind (six for unit champions, due to Champion of Chaos special rule), I can move on to a formation. Lets say my CAD army fits into a "Chaos Warband" formation. Now I need to remember that:

1. Everything in this formation has Objective Secured, even the HQ and dreadnoughts.
2. I need to roll twice for Champion of Chaos rolls on the Chaos Boon table, and take my pick.

Awesome, but wait, I can put the Chaos Warband into a "World Eaters Butcherhorde", which is not to be confused with a "Kharn's Butcherhorde", and add a couple Heldrakes, and now the whole mess gets:

1. Reroll Warlord Traits
2. After deployment, all non-vehicle units can make a special 2D6 move.
3. All non-vehicle units can re-roll failed charges.

So... I now have, if my math is correct, 10 special rules to keep in mind for any given unit of World Eater Chaos Space marines.

That's 7th edition 40k.

Ok so while I understood about 10% of that a lot of that didn't make any sense. I get the guts of it.. that there is a bunch of rules for rules and army building.. but that doesn't help me fall because 1.) I've never played Chaos and 2.) even if I did all those variations don't make sense to me... It just sounds overly complicated

Is that program that people used to use for army building still available? LoneWolf I think it was called? If it isn't, is there a decent army building program out there now a days?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jreilly89 wrote:
Mix and matching armies is probably much more common now than in previous additions, due to the rise of Battle Brothers.

7th is a ton of fun, but can still be bogged down by rules messiness. That and formations/Lords of War in regular games have really screwed the power level of armies, so I'd advise to stick to playing for fun and not competitive games.

What are battle bro's?

Ok... Did you ever play an Edition of a Games Workshop game where you could take models from multiple codices? If so, that's allies. You're now allowed to take units in a single "army" from multiple codices.

Different codices have different levels of allegiance. The "best" is battle brothers. For example, all Imperial codices are Battle Brothers. They can benefit each other, and mix and match characters / transports to certain degrees with each other's units. I could have a Space Marine Librarian join a squad of Guardsmen, for example, and embark in their Chimera, after the first turn. But they can't start the game inside. Other levels get less "cooperative" but Battle Bros allow for the greatest abuses between codices.

There are army building programs, but I still use pen and paper. Or make something in a word processor.

On the competitive edge, it is easier than ever to make full-on rock / paper / scissors armies. For example, a Full Knight army has at least AV 12 on any given facing. So any attack with strength 5 or less has absolutely no chance to harm anything in your opponent's army. Not that Knights are the best, but just to throw some context of the shape of the game these days.

Movement has never been so important nor has there ever been such an imbalance in how quickly units can move. Basic infantry can move 6" + d6" per turn. Eldar Jetbikes can move 12" in the Movement phase, another 36" in the movement phase, and then an additional 2d6" in the assault phase, whichever direction they want. So basic infantry can move 7-12" if they don't shoot, and Jetbikes can move 50-60" in a single turn. I think... it's been a while.

Any concept of the old 1 HQ, 2 Troops and a bunch of other stuff is completely gone. There are several "formations" that allow you to take basically 3 of a kind of something and call it a legitimate group of models. Or you take a Character and then add a crap-ton of "something" to it. Or you get a bunch of free upgrades. Basically, they took special snowflake rules above and beyond anything you could probably imagine. Units have special rules. Characters can add special rules to those units. Sub-Formations can add special rules. Grand-Formations can add special rules. Taking special characters as your leader can add special rules to your units. Different Space Marine chapters give different special rules to your units. Taking specific combinations of the above can add special rules to your units.

So there are actually scenarios where you might or might not have a special rule based on whether or not you already have certain special rules. It's just aggravating.

Rules have become more complex, without adding any real layers to the tactical choices in the game. Just a crap-ton more modifiers, and a crap-ton of conditional modifiers. And everything is random tables now. It's just so random. I'm desperately hoping for a rules reset at this point. Something along the lines of 2nd to 3rd edition, but it doesn't look to be coming any time soon. Honestly, I think I'd rather play Age of Sigmar right now, if I could find people to play. I think Lizardmen would be fun...

For some reason I learn a lot from the army building programs.. What's a good one?

Battle scribe probably the best/most used.

https://webapplications-webroster.rhcloud.com/rc/web/#/rosterCreator I've been using this one recently.

Awesome!

Next one... So I know the old school armies.. e.g. BA Orcs Chaos, but there are some new ones..

Can some of you guys be helpful enough to give the lowdown on:

Militarum Tempestus
Cult Mechanicus
Officio Assassinorum
Harlequins
Genestealer Cults

Are these like stand alone armies or are they like just additions to current armies?

mikewars85 wrote:
Awesome!

Next one... So I know the old school armies.. e.g. BA Orcs Chaos, but there are some new ones..

Can some of you guys be helpful enough to give the lowdown on:

Militarum Tempestus
Cult Mechanicus
Officio Assassinorum
Harlequins
Genestealer Cults

Are these like stand alone armies or are they like just additions to current armies?

MT: Supposed to be a standalone, but generally its not strong enough and some say it's replaced by IG in general

CM: Standalone, usually combined with Skitarii

Officio Assassin: The four assassins that can be taken in formation, or as single detachments to add to an army

Harlequins: Standalone, but has some issues that tend to be filled by allies

GSC: Very much a standalone army, can stand on its own two feet.

I forgot to ask about the Deathwatch, are they like the SEALS of the SM?

Thanks Zeblo, that was actually really helpful.

What are their like STR's and weaknesses? Like how do those you answered about play? Quick attack, shock troops, etc.

Also does anyone know where I can get a 7th edition rulebook, not the entire three book set, just the rulebook? maybe on PDF?

mikewars85 wrote:
I forgot to ask about the Deathwatch, are they like the SEALS of the SM?

Thanks Zeblo, that was actually really helpful.

What are their like STR's and weaknesses? Like how do those you answered about play? Quick attack, shock troops, etc.

Also does anyone know where I can get a 7th edition rulebook, not the entire three book set, just the rulebook? maybe on PDF?

Deathwatch is.. If you played an entire army of Sternguards with nearly everything having special ammo. Their strengths is flexibility but low unit numbers (Think Grey Knights). They get special ammo for everything, Shotguns, Stalker Bolters, and boltguns. With some special high ranking xenotech for the upper tier and their formations tend to target a specific slot (HQ, Elite, FA, ETC.) that gives them benefits for attacking those from that slot and their chapter tactic enforces this by letting you attack a specific slot and gain bonuses for attacking.

Their other weakness is a lack of Vehicles, you get transports and the flyer that's it.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

mikewars85 wrote:
I forgot to ask about the Deathwatch, are they like the SEALS of the SM?

Thanks Zeblo, that was actually really helpful.

What are their like STR's and weaknesses? Like how do those you answered about play? Quick attack, shock troops, etc.

Also does anyone know where I can get a 7th edition rulebook, not the entire three book set, just the rulebook? maybe on PDF?

Deathwatch is.. If you played an entire army of Sternguards with nearly everything having special ammo. Their strengths is flexibility but low unit numbers (Think Grey Knights). They get special ammo for everything, Shotguns, Stalker Bolters, and boltguns. With some special high ranking xenotech for the upper tier and their formations tend to target a specific slot (HQ, Elite, FA, ETC.) that gives them benefits for attacking those from that slot and their chapter tactic enforces this by letting you attack a specific slot and gain bonuses for attacking.

Their other weakness is a lack of Vehicles, you get transports and the flyer that's it.

Sounds dirty! What about the other armies I mentioned? Thanks again for the noob help.

7th is the worst ruleset on the market for competitive play, but is still fun narratively as long as you have good people to play with.

There is far too much randomness though. Warlord traits, pysker abilities, and countless special rules or even basic rules (like running and assault) rely on random roles that should just be set numbers. If you eliminate that, by allowing people to pick warlord traits for example, it helps more than you would think.

The game will scratch your itch, but even the most innocent of new players have picked up on nagging issues or flaws in my experience. It very much feels like the game is getting in your way fun wise, be that in competitive or narrative play.

I do like the flexibility in army building (mixing blood Angels and IG for example is not only possible but quite easy to do) The problem is the rules allow for abuse and absolutely bizzare combos like Tau/eldar that are usually just power gamed with little thought to them. This applies to a lot of Imperial combos you'll see as well though.

mikewars85 wrote:

Also does anyone know where I can get a 7th edition rulebook, not the entire three book set, just the rulebook? maybe on PDF?

Dark Vengeance Box (Dark Angel vs Chaos) set has a stand alone rule book. No fluff, just the rules.

If you do not need the contents, there are many copies of that rule book on Ebay.

Draco765 wrote:

mikewars85 wrote:

Also does anyone know where I can get a 7th edition rulebook, not the entire three book set, just the rulebook? maybe on PDF?

Dark Vengeance Box (Dark Angel vs Chaos) set has a stand alone rule book. No fluff, just the rules.

If you do not need the contents, there are many copies of that rule book on Ebay.

Yeah probably where I'm going to get the stuff from.

7th is played the most because it's the newest, thus all rule and model releases are intended for it and it's easy to agree on.

However, 7th is not very popular, and probably the only reason the community hasn't decided to play a different edition instead is that we can't get enough people to agree on which older edition we should all play instead of 7th. Some particular groups have settled on 2nd, but many others would prefer 5th.

And the reality is that we need to agree on some particular version of the rules to play under, which is the only difficulty in abandoning 7th edition - we can't figure out what to play instead with enough unity to consider it the new standard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mikewars85 wrote:
I forgot to ask about the Deathwatch, are they like the SEALS of the SM?

That's a weird question to ask.

Space Marines are already the SEALs of the Imperium. However, they're apparently numerous enough to have an equivalent of SEALs among themselves.

Holy crap, the Imperium must be MASSIVE.

Fifth was my favorite.

That's crazy to think that within the best of the best there's better

What hasn't really been explained properly is, that there are allies now. That means you can use two, three or more codices if you wanted. Say you can use the Eldar codex and "ally" in the Tau codex. Or you can use the Space Marine codex and "ally" in, Astra Militarium, or if you wanted Eldar, or Tau, or Orks or even Necrons, Tyranids Chaos Space Marines even. As was mentioned there is different "levels" of allies. So you be strictly limited in what you can do with say Space Marines and Tyranids but have an easier time with Space Marines and IG/AM or say Imperial Knights, or even Eldar.

There is a lot of random in 7th edition. From charging to choosing Warlord traits to your "leader" or to the new Psychic Phase. Too much random for my liking.

But the biggest change from 6th edition and just added to 7th edition was allies. Before you took the bad in your codex with the good. Now in 7th, you can "cherry pick" the best of any codex now and not take any bad units.

Also there are "Formations" now. Depending on what units it says you need to take, a "tax" you get free rules, or even free units like transports or what ever depending on the army you play. So in fact you can be playing a 1000 point game, but your opponent can have like 1200+ points because of a "formation" he has chosen and gave him free units.

Imbalance and codex creep is off the scale in 7th edition. You have Eldar who have cheap knights and then have Tyranids who have to over pay for what their unit abilities can do.

Hope this helps a bit more.

*edit*

I forgot to throw in that 5th edition was a shootier edition than 4th. 4th edition was like an assaulty edition, and 5th made it shooty. 6th edition made it even more shootier. 7th edition just made anyone who wanted to make an assault army just pull their hair out until a few months ago when they introduced Genestealer Cult army. We have overwatch added into the game now. So anyone who wants to assault, the other person gets to shoot first. So basically your opponent can shoot twice. Once in the shooting phase and then again shoot again in the assault phase. Yes the person needs to hit on 6's to hit in Overwatch but it's amazing how often those 6s come in.

Add in that Tau can Overwatch even if they are not being assaulted and Dark Angels get to Overwatch depending on the formation they have at full BS so they can shoot twice as normal. So making assaulting even harder.

Tyranids who should be able to assault easily have a hard time. Tyranids if they want to assault someone who is in "cover" first get overwatched, remove minis, and if not in distance because a unit got removed from the front can't assault. If they can still assault then they assault last because "blade of grass" slowed them down so they strike last. This goes with other armies as well but put Tyrnaids even worse than they should be. Just shows how unbalanced and unfair 7th edition is.

That's good info. I'm going to start buying new stuff here shortly. Thanks for everyone who helped out and if you guys want we should keep this thread going for other people who might be returning to the Motherland after an absence. Now I just gotta find out who plays in my area:X