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I've seen people make all sorts of references along the lines of 'the good old days', or airing old grievances. I've heard lots about 2nd, 3rd and 5th ed (my first game was at the tail end of 5th just before the start of 6th).
But I almost never see people refer to 4th ed at all. Why is this, was it bad?

Lols, maybe its like 4th ed DnD where every body hated it and it is best to forget about it.

From what I remember (I started with 4th and dropped it after a while then returned in 2009, so I have no experience with anything before 4th) there's not really many good old days of 4th ed. The cover system from what I remember was interesting but annoying, basically terrain features had a size value and so did the models; though I do like the true line of sight from 5th ed more as it was more streamlined but not without fault. To shoot at anything further than the closest unit you had to make a leadership test.

Skimmers were broken (fish of fury) and annoying. Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

4th was good. That's why you don't hear much about it. If something was good, it's not usually talked about. If something was bad, then people will whine constantly about it.

 n0t_u wrote:
From what I remember (I started with 4th and dropped it after a while then returned in 2009, so I have no experience with anything before 4th) there's not really many good old days of 4th ed. The cover system from what I remember was interesting but annoying, basically terrain features had a size value and so did the models; though I do like the true line of sight from 5th ed more as it was more streamlined but not without fault. To shoot at anything further than the closest unit you had to make a leadership test.

Skimmers were broken (fish of fury) and annoying. Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

Pretty sure consolidiation to combat was REMOVED in 4th ed. It was big problem in 3rd ed especially when there was possible 1st turn charges so BA armies etc kept running over with hidden fists, 1st turn charges and consolidiating into new combats.

Could be wrong but I could swear lack of that was big change in 4th

tneva82 wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
From what I remember (I started with 4th and dropped it after a while then returned in 2009, so I have no experience with anything before 4th) there's not really many good old days of 4th ed. The cover system from what I remember was interesting but annoying, basically terrain features had a size value and so did the models; though I do like the true line of sight from 5th ed more as it was more streamlined but not without fault. To shoot at anything further than the closest unit you had to make a leadership test.

Skimmers were broken (fish of fury) and annoying. Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

Pretty sure consolidiation to combat was REMOVED in 4th ed. It was big problem in 3rd ed especially when there was possible 1st turn charges so BA armies etc kept running over with hidden fists, 1st turn charges and consolidiating into new combats.

Could be wrong but I could swear lack of that was big change in 4th

I think it was 5th because I had started in 4th and remember the fear of genestealers I used to get from before I put thought into positioning my own units and how they'd wiped out a unit or two in a single turn.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I've seen people make all sorts of references along the lines of 'the good old days', or airing old grievances. I've heard lots about 2nd, 3rd and 5th ed (my first game was at the tail end of 5th just before the start of 6th).
But I almost never see people refer to 4th ed at all. Why is this, was it bad?

It was pretty good, actually. The vehicle rules were fragile, Eldar broke the game at the end of its life and a lot of codices wouldn't receive an update until 5th ed, but overall it was a nice edition, especially from a hobbying standpoint as back then GW openly encouraged conversions and scratch-building terrain, something that they only recently started to do again (barely)
I preferred it to 5th ed, 6th ed and 7th ed at least, which gradually made the game more absurd until a hard reset in the form of 8th was required. And whilst I do prefer 8th ed to 6th and 7th, I still greatly prefer the older style of formatting and list building, where the points were actually in the codex entry, instead of having to flip to another section of the book.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
From what I remember (I started with 4th and dropped it after a while then returned in 2009, so I have no experience with anything before 4th) there's not really many good old days of 4th ed. The cover system from what I remember was interesting but annoying, basically terrain features had a size value and so did the models; though I do like the true line of sight from 5th ed more as it was more streamlined but not without fault. To shoot at anything further than the closest unit you had to make a leadership test.

Skimmers were broken (fish of fury) and annoying. Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again, and genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

Pretty sure consolidiation to combat was REMOVED in 4th ed. It was big problem in 3rd ed especially when there was possible 1st turn charges so BA armies etc kept running over with hidden fists, 1st turn charges and consolidiating into new combats.

Could be wrong but I could swear lack of that was big change in 4th

Nope, consolidation in combat still existed in 4th. Which is why Harlequins and stealers were so goddamn annoying, because they can just hop from unit to unit.

From a personal POV, I just didn’t get in many games of 4th. My FLGS had closed, and it was during a rough patch in my life financially.

It was also a transition system. 3rd reset everything to a simple level. 5th was a tighter refined (but larger) ruleset. 4th was just kinda in the middle. People, especially on the internet, tend to favor extremes. But also extremes stick out in your memory. 4th was just a quiet step in the evolution of 3rd to 7th.

It had it’s flaws (vehicles, especially transports, comes to mind) but also some interesting quirks (target priority, terrain, change to rapid fire). Not a bad edition, but not the best.

What years was it in use?

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
What years was it in use?

August 2004 - July 2008

I played mostly in 4th and loved it. I thought it was the golden era of codexes and rulebook (3.5->4) anyway. I'm definetly biased but I sometimes take out the old 4th books and read them over. I think it might not get much mentioning because 3d was the huge overhaul and 5th was the beginning of the fall. 4th kind of gets squeezed between them. If people talk about it then they usually mention the release of apocalypse, the cityfight rules and the closing of specialist games. Also it bears note that campaigns from 3d, like the armageddon and eye of terror campaign, kind of overshadows 4th fall for medusa campaign. The 4ed rulebook also incuded that wonderfull little minigame: kill team. I had a lots of fun with that system. It was very diffrent from the kill team game we have now. There was also a certain focus on levelling up models during the course of campaigns.

As per game mechanics I think it was solid enough. It had a bigger emphasis on close combat then any other edition, which I liked.

4th was when I started. I like to think about it as Chaos' hayday. There was so many customization options for lords, Lts, and champions. You could even give bikers chainaxes. The one thing that did suck for me was, I couldn't run raptors or obliteraters without losing my WE traits. Because they couldn't have different marks.

The terrain rules made sense to me as well. Assault was good. You could sweeping advance into another unit and attack, but only if you wiped out the unit you charged before they attacked back.

 Nerak wrote:
As per game mechanics I think it was solid enough. It had a bigger emphasis on close combat then any other edition, which I liked.

How did it handle CC compared to 8th?

I started in 4th and still have the 4th edition rulebook on my shelf after chucking everything since into the recycler. 4th was alright; 8th is better, the bits between were the teething problems we had to get to it.

8th is 4th with the following improvements:

Characters can actually be killed
Turn 1 charge is possible but a serious challenge, as it should be
Consolidate into combat doesn't shut down an entire gunline
Blast Weapons that aren't a total chore/waste of time to resolve.
Chaos Close Combat isn't unbeatable
Scoring/Objectives much more sensible
VASTLY better internal balance per codex, which is saying something about how bad 4th was, not how good 8th is. It's likely that the only non mono-build army of the era was Chaos, which is part of why they liked it so much
Pre-measuring ranges is allowed
All kinds of vehicles are useful
The AP System doesn't render entire codex options irrelevant
SPLIT FIRE

And the following regressions:
The Cover System
The loss of outflank
The loss of comparative weapon skill (I do miss this)
Loss of Reserves walking on (this too)

As for close combat, i've gone on a proper good rant about it here. The Big deal to emphasise is that shooting attacks and meelee at the initative step were all resolved together, but the player who owned the models being targeted assigned the *weapons* that scored wounds to his own models; so you could take high strength, good ap wounds on ablative shields, and bolters on 2+ armour saves all the day long. In CC this was even worse as power weapons were straight up ignore armour saves meaning PWeps were a very expensive gamble. This was also the era before challenges, where characters could simply swap entourages whenever they liked and never take a wound during the course of the game.

4th was ok. 3rd edition was very CC driven. 4th edition was the beginning of nerfing CC so it was hated by people that liiked their CC armies.

4th got cracked open when Leaf Blower entered the picture. It still had its busted codices but the rules overall weren't bad. They were very similar to 3rd ed rules with some tweaks like the removal of consolidation into combat and things of that nature.

4th was not offensively bad, nor a shining golden god. That's why no-one really talks about it.

4th is in a weird place where 3rd was remembered for everything being on relative equal terms (and being bland. oh so bland. Space Marine Terminators having conditional Deepstrike was considered "out there") while 5th was remembered for having the most fun set of rules (unless you were a nid player), only mired by the last three Ward Dexes. 4th, by comparison, was a hasty patchjob trying to unify some of 3rd's unique mechanics (such as Fearless), the streamlining of a few armies (most notably, this caused Chaos to become a one-note force while Orks became ridiculously OP), and the introduction of a few mechanics that would not be fully refined until 5th (most notably Eternal Warrior).

Basically, 3rd edition was the basis, 4th was mid-polish, and 5th was the real polish before the semi-overhaul that was 6th (flyers, psyker rules and mainstream detachment systems).

 chimeara wrote:
4th was when I started. I like to think about it as Chaos' hayday. There was so many customization options for lords, Lts, and champions. You could even give bikers chainaxes. The one thing that did suck for me was, I couldn't run raptors or obliteraters without losing my WE traits. Because they couldn't have different marks.

The terrain rules made sense to me as well. Assault was good. You could sweeping advance into another unit and attack, but only if you wiped out the unit you charged before they attacked back.

That's the 3.5 codex, the 4E chaos codex is the one that cut all the legion stuff out.

4th did have one of the best rulebooks they ever printed (as far as content goes).

If I recall correctly, it had:
40k rules
Kill Team rules
Combat Patrol rules
Campaign rules
Terrain building instructions (homemade stuff)
Painting guide
Scenarios (like 10 or 12 of them)

It just felt like the last main rulebook to throw everything in before they started removing stuff.

Indeed. It was the last time this game was truly a hobby.

Also one often overlooked aspect of 4th edition was Black Gobbo, which was a wealth of hobby info and what really got me into the game.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
4th was not offensively bad, nor a shining golden god. That's why no-one really talks about it.

Also known as the beige edition.

 zedmeister wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
4th was not offensively bad, nor a shining golden god. That's why no-one really talks about it.

Also known as the beige edition.

It was the dark days for Chaos however. Getting that awful Gavdex was what sharply cut CSM down and tried to make every chaos army feel very samey, while the background tried to demphasize the legions and started the "Every bit of legion is gone, just small warbands of chaos pillaging."

I actually really enjoyed 4th.

Vehicles blew up a lot, but that was fun and okay. Superheavy tanks were actually fairly well balanced for their cost, and fit into the army in unique and innovative ways (e.g. a Baneblade took up 3 Heavy Support slots, but a Warhound Titan took up 3 heavy support and an HQ, while something smaller like a Malcador might only take up 2 Heavy Support) which actually seems like a neat way to include them. In trade for being fairly fragile, 4th edition had the "Defensive Weapons" rule which meant that any weapon of str 5 or below could be fired on the move without penalty, IIRC, making things like heavy bolters and heavy flamers preferential to things like lascannons and multi-meltas for sponsons if you planned on moving.

Transports were hard to use, because units that came out of a destroyed transport were Entangled (essentially Pinning that worked on units otherwise immune to Pinning), but were pretty badass when they worked, allowing people to assault out of them.

The only problem I had with 4th, that actually made me upset, was the consolidating from combat-into-combat. It was like 8th except the unit that consolidated could fight, so they could fight 5 or 6 or infinity times in a turn and just steamroll a line.

The game was also much smaller back then - a single Baneblade or trio of Leman Russ Tanks was a lot of heavy armour, for example, and Guard usually only brought two or three big platoons (so max 100 guardsmen really). At least in my meta.

What was so different about the vehicles?

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
What was so different about the vehicles?

hullpoints/wounds were gone.

Vehicles had armour values on different facings (which worked at this scale because like I said, having more than 5 tanks in a list was RARE). If you matched or beat the armour, you got a special effect, and it differed based on weapon type:

Glancing hits table:
1) Crew shaken: Can move, but not fire.
2) Crew Stunned: Can't move, can't fire.
3) (I forget this one, could be crew stunned and crew shaken was 1 or 2?)
4) Weapon Destroyed
5) Immobilized
6) Destroyed

Penetrating hits table:
1) Crew shaken: Can move, but not fire.
2) Crew Stunned: Can't move, can't fire.
3) Weapon Destroyed
4) Immobilized
5) Destroyed
6) Explodes

Ordnance penetrating hits table:
1) Crew stunned
2) Weapon Destroyed
3) Immobilized
4) Destroyed
5) Explodes
6) Annihilated.

They are pretty severe, and transports were fairly bad, but the game was epic. Ordnance weapons felt like proper tank killers, and they should have been because they stopped you from firing all your other guns, even defensive weapons. So things like Vanquisher tanks had One Big Gun essentially, but holy feth did that big gun do work. I remember playing against a buddy's Daemonhunters with an Inquisition Land Raider stuffed full of GK and a terminator armour inquisitor, and my tank command Vanquisher got a Vehicle Annihilated result. The land raider and all its passengers were deleted, and everything within an automatic 6" took a strength 4 (? I think) hit. It was glorious.

Superheavy Tanks had things called 'structure points' which were kind of like hull points, but synergized with the damage chart. So for example, a Baneblade had 3 structure points, and any Explodes or better results allowed another roll on the chart (called a Chain Reaction). So you'd end up with a Vanquisher tank doing the following:
1 structure point, with a 5+ on the ordnance penetrating hits chart which is an Explodes, so he rolls again and scores a Weapon Destroyed result. It really made Baneblades quite fragile, but people were less psychologically scarred by them for it, so it was a lot of fun.

The thing I miss most about 7th is vehicle explosions, the idea of the shell punching through the armour and hitting the ammunition and BOOM. I know a lot of people are happy to see it gone, but to me annihilated sounds awesome.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
The thing I miss most about 7th is vehicle explosions, the idea of the shell punching through the armour and hitting the ammunition and BOOM. I know a lot of people are happy to see it gone, but to me annihilated sounds awesome.

The problem with 7th imo wasn't the damage table so much as the hull points.

The problem with 4th edition's vehicle rules was you were just as likely to get Crew Stunned as you were Vehicle Annihilated, even with a Vanquisher. That meant that you could fire a Vanquisher at a Baneblade and get 3 Chain Reactions in a row and blow it up with a Vehicle Annihilated on a superheavy, and then shoot at a Rhino for 6 turns and get 6 Crew Stunned results.

So they tried to level out the damage vehicles suffered by adding Hull Points, but now vehicles had 2 kill mechanics: they could still Explode in one shot, or they could endure 3 Crew Shaken results and just sort of .... fall apart.

I do think 8th edition is the best solution, allowing vehicles to suffer damage (degrading profile) while still having a fairly flat death curve (instead of just insta-exploding or never dying).

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I've seen people make all sorts of references along the lines of 'the good old days', or airing old grievances. I've heard lots about 2nd, 3rd and 5th ed (my first game was at the tail end of 5th just before the start of 6th).
But I almost never see people refer to 4th ed at all. Why is this, was it bad?

Mostly it was just an evolved version of 3E. Basically it was 3E with some slightly different terrain rules, absurdly punitive transport rules (literally any penetrating hit required the unit to disembark and take a pinning test, even if it just shook the tank otherwise), and some better CC rules.

CC was pretty big as area terrain made it very easy to avoid LoS completely and could then use new consolidations to chain-run up a line. Non-skimmer vehicles were pretty bad and non-skimmer transports were nonfunctional.

But mostly, 4E was just a slightly modified 3E. The power armies were mostly Starcannon-spam/Alaitoc Disruption Eldar then Skimmerspam Flying Circus once their 2006 book came out, Assault cannon spam & Lasplas marines, Tau Fish-o-fury, Necrons kinda in general, and various CSM builds.

Guard Armoured Company was strong too, but too expensive to compete at the highest levels. Much like my 3-superheavy tank list is now: it was "meta defining" for casuals while being cripplingly underequipped for competitive play.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Guard Armoured Company was strong too, but too expensive to compete at the highest levels. Much like my 3-superheavy tank list is now: it was "meta defining" for casuals while being cripplingly underequipped for competitive play.

They tended to, when Chapter Approved lists were allowed, either totally overrun an opponent or get tabled by turn 3, they were very awkward lists, and the Russ was at its probably least functional state ever in 4E (ordnance restrictions on firing main gun and other weapons, no Heavy/Lumbering Behemoth, side AV12, no Ballistic Skill scatter reduction, blasts hit partially covered models on a 4+ instead of automatically, etc)