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As above does 5th edition or 8th edition have better balance. And which one is more fun to play?

at this stage 8th is the easy winner..

mainly because all of the units in every race have been rebalanced to a unified ruleset

While in 5th you still had codex creep, i.e. DE were still on their 3rd ed codex

GodDamUser wrote:
at this stage 8th is the easy winner..

mainly because all of the units in every race have been rebalanced to a unified ruleset

While in 5th you still had codex creep, i.e. DE were still on their 3rd ed codex

yeah, we'll see how things go once some codices come out, but right now, things are as even as they're ever going to be I suspect

BrianDavion wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
at this stage 8th is the easy winner..

mainly because all of the units in every race have been rebalanced to a unified ruleset

While in 5th you still had codex creep, i.e. DE were still on their 3rd ed codex

yeah, we'll see how things go once some codices come out, but right now, things are as even as they're ever going to be I suspect

Not sure I've only seen a handful of battle reports.

Do people forget how OP vehicles was in 5th? I don't as a tyranid player, it was truly pointless trying to beat mechanized. Then we have Grey Knights..

8th is so much better, both internally and externally.

Apples and oranges, the last reset was 3rd ed.

8th was probably better balanced, but I think 5th might have been more fun. Especially since, at the moment, most armies are playing with very few options and such.

But maybe I'm just biased because 5th was the last time the DE codex had a shred of effort put into it.

5th had Nob biker and Paladins. Diverse unit equipment wound allocation abuse was worse than anything I have seen in 8th so far. 5th was great most of the time but then you hit wound allocation abuse and it was a real pain to play.

Nob Bikers were a noobslay. The most WTF item of 5th IMO was Njal Stormcaller, since he was incredibly flexible, and could hard-counter Psykers, Tyranid MCs (in fluff, Tyranids eat planets. In 5th, the planet ate Tyranids), vehicles, buff your own vehicles, and serve up tea. Nova 2011 was a particularly funny example of this in the semi-final game of Tony Kopach vs Justin Hildebrandt (aka dashofpepper). Njal had his table of random effects, and one of tbem was each enemy unit within 18/24 (I forget) takes D6 S8 AP 5 hits. Justin was running Venomspam and a Beaststar with Baron Sathonyx.

Justin: "He does WHAT now?"

Anyway, the internal balance in 8th is laughable at a glance. For some bizarre reason, you can buy 2 Razorbacks with twin Assault Cannons for less than a single Autolas Predator, while a Shuriken Cannon is only 2 points more than twin Shuriken Catapults. Both 5th and 8th have their bugs (5e: "50% cover", "Skimmers dodge ramming attacks", 8e: "Let's start with squad coherency and go from there"), but I feel 5e was ultimately less imbalanced as a whole. Maybe it's because most of the armies were Marines of different flavors but meh.

4th was my favorite before 8th released. Ask me again towards the end of the summer and I'll have a better idea of how 8th stacks up. I think I might find a way to go back to using templates. The exclusion of templates is literally the only thing that bothers me about the new edition. Bolt Action, a game largely based on 40k rules, only managed one edition without them.

8th is better thus far (too early to tell really), as far as balance. Toward the end of 5th the game was very skewed toward some armies. 5th vehicle rules also ended up with luck being a large determining factor in some games (in vehicle spam match-ups it often came down to the damage table rolls.).

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Nob Bikers were a noobslay. The most WTF item of 5th IMO was Njal Stormcaller, since he was incredibly flexible, and could hard-counter Psykers, Tyranid MCs (in fluff, Tyranids eat planets. In 5th, the planet ate Tyranids), vehicles, buff your own vehicles, and serve up tea. Nova 2011 was a particularly funny example of this in the semi-final game of Tony Kopach vs Justin Hildebrandt (aka dashofpepper). Njal had his table of random effects, and one of tbem was each enemy unit within 18/24 (I forget) takes D6 S8 AP 5 hits. Justin was running Venomspam and a Beaststar with Baron Sathonyx.

Justin: "He does WHAT now?"

Anyway, the internal balance in 8th is laughable at a glance. For some bizarre reason, you can buy 2 Razorbacks with twin Assault Cannons for less than a single Autolas Predator, while a Shuriken Cannon is only 2 points more than twin Shuriken Catapults. Both 5th and 8th have their bugs (5e: "50% cover", "Skimmers dodge ramming attacks", 8e: "Let's start with squad coherency and go from there"), but I feel 5e was ultimately less imbalanced as a whole. Maybe it's because most of the armies were Marines of different flavors but meh.

Just wanted to point out that the Autolas Predator is absolutely amazing now. The Pred Autocannon is an extremely good gun, while, IME, the Assault Cannon really isn't any more. It's a lot of shots, but it's only D1 and the change to the wound chart has really hurt it since it now wounds most things on 3s instead of 4s. The Predator also outranges the Razorback. 2 TLAC Razors for 1 Predator seems like it's about right to me. They also fill very different roles.

I think it's too early to say for sure which is more balanced and the question of fun is difficult to answer too since 5th edition comes with a strange combination of nostalgia and the weight of having all the various Codices released for it while 8th is still very fresh with just basic army lists right now. 8th is pretty fun for me so far but there's a lot of opportunity for GW to mess it up as the edition matures. I think it's headed in the right direction though.

The end of 5th was complete garbage in terms of balance. Balance was a joke.

it's way too early to be saying with any certainty how balanced 8th is as a whole. People are still figuring out how their main armies work, let alone others. Go read some of the tactic threads, a lot of them are a pretty even split between "we're OP" and "we suck". Let the meta shake out and ask again in the fall

5th was the most balanced edition we had until now. 8th however is still too young to tell.

However just because 5th was better than the rest doesn't mean it was "balanced". I remember how the then-new Necrons, BA and Grey Knights were basically the trifecta of cheese, with the occasional Thunderwolf Spam and Noob Bikers. One of the bigger problems with the edition was that even underpowered armies had horrible internal balance; try finding a Tyranid player not spamming Zoanthropes, Trygons, Tervigons or the Doom. Or a Chaos player not running a Lashprince with Plague Marines.

Its also the edition that gave us some crowning moments in facepalmdry in terms of lore and fluff. Anyone remember the Deepstriking Landraiders, Bloody Fists of Blood (or Wolfy Claws of Wolf, which still exists), Blood Grey Knights, Brofisting Necrons, etc. Granted later editions weren't that much better, but this was when I felt like the lore just took a nosedive into the ridiculous.

Damn lash, I forgot about that abomination. Why would you make an ability that let you touch your opponent's models? Maybe I don't want you to touch my models...

 Trickstick wrote:
Damn lash, I forgot about that abomination. Why would you make an ability that let you touch your opponent's models? Maybe I don't want you to touch my models...

Lash would probably have received less complaints if it was "select a table edge, and the enemy must directly move their unit 6" in that direction, stopping if they come within 1" of the enemy" or so. By itself, the power ended up not being that good simply because it didn't work versus vehicles, and Obliterators have always been overcosted for AT. This left, at best, 2 or so Autolas Predators and maybe some Bolt Princes, as well as your choice of Melta vector (Plagues or Melta/Combi Marines). Bikes and Raptors were overcosted to the point of unplayability; A CSM Bike was only 2 points cheaper than a Rhino!

This being said, 5e was also the edition where I could take Warbuggies and Deffrolla Wagons and not be laughed off the table, as well as an edition where I managed to krump a full-on Draigostar with Orks. Other than 50% cover and the lack of any HP though, my biggest annoyance was the lack of premeasuring, as well as the oddity of Skimmers getting a 3+ dodge versus Ramming ("the ramming vehicle stops, confused at what just happened"). Compared to the vehicle rules of 8th though, I miss the "forwards, backwards and pivot on the spot" clause.

Why is this even a question? 5th edition was horrible.