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Hey everyone, this thread is all about 2nd edition of Warhammer 40k. I've just bought the boxed set and all codexes, and i'm planning to try out the retro version of the game. I've never had a chance before, as I started collecting at 3rd edition. The boxed set does not come with figures or terrain, but I think currently available models can be used to play. So, share your experience and thoughts about the game.

Be prepared for nonsense.

And far lower model counts. Also make sure you’ve a full range of D4, D6, D8, D10, D12 and D20 dice, because you’re gonna need them.

Keep a sharp eye on whoever is dealing out the psychic charge cards. Someone good at shuffling can more or less ensure they get Total Power (or whatever it was called in 40k) with alarming regularity.

You’ll also need lots and lots and lots of blast templates. Because someone weapons persist. Especially if you’re fond of lobbing around Smoke or Blind Grenades.

Practice your vehicle turning, as it’s template restricted.

Be prepared to be looking up rules every so often, as it had a lot of them (many people forget to make a certain armour pen roll deduction for range....but it’s in there!).

Much as I loved 2nd Ed, I don’t think I could reasonably go back now. It was fun, but mostly because I had no other experience to compare it to!

It’s a wonderful wonderful mess!


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Oh, and your Strategy Cards? Remember to destroy your Virus Outbreak card. We were all told to, because it was utterly horrific against everyone but SME!

I would recommend tracking down the FAQs from that era... They're floating around online in various formats, if you don't want to try buying 5 years worth of White Dwarf backissues to find them. Along with a lot of rules clarifications, they included some changes, like quantity limits on Wargear cards.

Also, you mention having the boxed set and codexes... If you don't also have it, you'll want Dark Millenium for the psychic rules and expanded vehicle rules.

So far as actually playing the game goes... Try to keep in mind that it was a game written for a less cut-throat age, and is a little loose on balance. Eldar and Space Wolves in particular have access to some conbos that are just game-breakingly overpowered. If you approach list building from a 'What looks fun?' rather than 'What makes the most powerful list?' mentality, you should have fun with it.

Well, thanks for the advice. The boxed set comes with Dark Millennium and loads of templates, tokens and markers. I'll might try to find the FAQ, but mostly this is for the funs. I'm currently collecting Dark Angels and Astra militarum (of the 8th edition), so that's what my armies are going to be.

It was a blast when I played it back in the 90's. It had broken combos in a similar fashion as today's 40K.

You may need to create extra markers such as for anti-plant and smoke. I think they were 1.5 inch radius.

I don't recall any single army not being playable, but do remember we locally removed Virus and Vortex grenades from the game.

Today's models will work with the game I would imagine. I think there are very few models that have been completely removed from the game.

A few things to watch out for -

1) Hide. You cannot draw a line of sight to models in cover if they hide unless you are right next to them, or they shoot. Combines with ...

2) Overwatch. Your opponent can shoot at any time during your phase. These two mechanics can drag a game down - if you've played the original necromunda you'll have an idea of how it can get.

3) Virus grenades and the virus stratagem. Best removed from the game. The same is true for vortex grenades before someone starts mixing them with deepstriking - ymmv.

4) Unrestricted restricted wargear - make sure that phoenix lord wargear is only used by phoenix lords, cameleoline is only used by assassins, etc.

5) Necrons. Against some armies in particular (the sanctuary 101 story was based on a battle report where they sisters were able to kill roughly one necron warrior per turn - and only did that well because the cron player was taking it easy).


2nd ed is full of shenanigans but the best way to deal with them is to play it and see what does and doesn't work for you.

Librarian. In terminator armour. With warp jump.generator (allowing a deep strike move per turn with a chance of just losing the guy entirely). And a vortex grenade. Teehee...

It was definately a game in which normal infantry was pretty irrelevant and super characters could be easily created that could basically cream the enemy army on their own. Mephiston was actually ungodly.

There is so much that comes to mind.

I remember we used to play blast markers as 3d objects.
Some weapons using blast markers stay in play.
At one point we were silly has had the blast infinity tall which was probably very wrong.
Close combat isn't very good compared to later editions.
Fear and Terror are a lot of fun.
Eldar were such cheese.
We did remove Virus outbreak strategy card and probably the Virus grenade but we left the Vortex grenade which after a few games became less and less useful, more so after the vortex detonator vehicle card was available.

My last game of 2nd was in 97'. I would love to play it again.
Looking back I think we tried way too hard to win and we should have played more cooperatively and made it more of a game that a competition. I lost so much more than I won for a lot of factors from not understanding my army to the codex imbalance issues. I found a noticeable improvement after changing from Dark Angels to Chaos Space Marine to Imperial Guard. Space Marines were really difficult for me but that may have been due to not having more units to choose from at the time. I don't recall even owing a Rhino until I switched to Chaos.
I think we called it Hero Hammer most of the time. The heroes could be fairly OP.

The codexes that are included;
Ultramarines, Angels of death, space wolves, Imperial guard, Chaos, tyranids, Eldar orks

So what I think are missing are sisters of battle and assassins.
I dont know if genestealer cult are in codex at then.

You'll find genestealer cult rules at the back of the tyranid codex.

Sisters of Battle had a codex near the tail end of 2nd. Assassins also had a 2nd edition codex near the tail end of 2nd (and had some nifty background information about an internal assassins conflict in the Vandire era). Necrons had White Dwarf rules as they were actually designed for 3rd.

The vortex power was a inquisition power. And the card had a tell. The starfield on the covered side was different for it. So find a better system to generate powers than drawing cards. I had a mate who always "somehow" managed to pick the vortex power (remember 90's were pre internet).

Ok then, i'll have to check.

It's amazing to go back and play it now. I've been playing with a few guys at my shop and it was as good as I remember. certainly lots of broken stuff but if you played it back then and play it now your obviously a lot older, wiser and not afraid to house rule certain things.

Tygre wrote:

The vortex power was a inquisition power. And the card had a tell. The starfield on the covered side was different for it. So find a better system to generate powers than drawing cards. I had a mate who always "somehow" managed to pick the vortex power (remember 90's were pre internet).

I recall people putting their power cards in card sleeves and rolling an appropriate dice to the number of cards. at least I saw that at all of the 2 or 3 tournaments I ever attended.

As others have said, the Virus Grenade card was a real bummer (potentially killing all or a significant portion of some armies the instant it is deployed), so I would recommend not using it. A lot of folks also say to remove the Vortex grenade, but my group always had fun watching it bounce all over the table and trying to avoid it like a hot potato once deployed. In particular, with the way the scatter dice worked, you could easily be doing more damage to yourself than to your opponent, so we never felt like it was unfairly OP.

Be prepared for lots of things that are very immersive (things like being able to "parry" in CC), and some things that are potentially a bit immersion breaking but still funny (firing a missile and having it land BEHIND YOU for example). The vehicle rules were pretty detailed too. You can have a tank blow up and have it throw its turret in a random direction doing damage to whatever it hit upon landing.

They still grasp of some of the more light-hearted Rogue Trader aspects of the setting at the time and were working those in to the game on a regular basis. One of my favorite memories was of a game using my Orks against a friends marines. He was using one of the old Armorcast Reaver titans at the time, and, knowing this, I had brought a Vortex grenade to deal with it. Instead, my throw went WAY wrong, scattering across my battle wagon and taking it out (with about 30 boys). Same turn my Shokk Attack gun managed to hit his Reaver, and I rolled the result that read something like "the terrified grots emerge from the warp tunnel directly on the driver's head." There was also something about them defecating, and generally blocking his vision, so the in-game result is that the vehicle went out of control and moved randomly. So we had the vortex bouncing around one side of the table, the titan stomping around randomly on the other side of the table, and both of our forces cramming into the middle, barely fighting, while trying to avoid getting erased by the vortex, or stomped on by the out-of-control titan. It was a hilarious image and something that I think is unique to that era. Good times.

I think the most important thing to remember was that 2nd edition was a couple of specific things:

1) It was the "cementing" of the lore which has carried on until today. They revamped/revised/planted the seeds of what would become the 40K lore more or less in 2nd edition. The writers of the codices were rather fantastic, so the codices themselves from 2nd edition are some of the best printed works GW has done. Even now I recommend them to people playing armies that match those books - simply as source material for where your army came from.

2) It was a large scale role-playing game and not a "wargame" by today's standards. Way more rules, way more mess, and way more thematic. Because of its role-playing heart, the game was also very subject to manipulation; so playing with decent human beings is key. There are several combinations in every army which you just "don't do" because it's a dick move. That's a discussion with your opponent.

3) 40K has existed in four forms since its inception; 1st was Rogue Trader...essentially a full on role-playing game. 2nd edition was pushing that role-playing game into a wargame. 3rd edition was a drastic shift to an extremely simple (by comparison) wargame; the guts of which would carry on through 7th edition. 8th edition was the first non-3rd base rule set, though it keeps the larger scale, simpler wargame style. Because of this, if you've played 40K from another era you'll have to forget essentially EVERYTHING you think you know about how the game plays. Weapons and stats are vastly different and do different things, etc.

Because of the RPG-lite styling, you'll have far more interesting stories and tales to tell after your games. If you're looking for gamer aids, I had started a 2nd edition support blog with heaps of PDFs I compiled from the various rulebooks, etc. You may find some of this content useful:

http://projectanvil.blogspot.com/?m=0

Namely under the Resources tag - keep in mind some of the datafaxes provided have been created since 2nd to fit in additional vehicles, etc.

If I could change two major things about 2nd edition? Close combat (absolute mess), and the Psychic Phase (could be done far smoother). The rest of it is mayhem but hugely enjoyable if done right.

This all sounds so much fun, as it does not matter if something is a bit of op.

 Spreelock wrote:
This all sounds so much fun, as it does not matter if something is a bit of op.

I'll simply say this; having played 40K on/off for nearly 25 years...my favourite memories pretty much all extend from 2nd edition, because it was so thematic/narrative - something it lost after 3rd edition.

Example:

We're playing a Tyranids vs. "Us" game, where my buddies and I would make a 1,000 point list each and play against an unending tide of my buddy's father's Tyranids (which he painted lovely). One of us brought a Leman Russ which was hit or attacked and lost all of its five(?) crew except one. So he could drive the tank, or shoot one of the weapons...then the Leman Russ was hit again and lost its track so it skidded off and came to a halt. This Leman Russ became a one-man bunker as the last crewman was jumping from seat to seat each turn shooting various weapons (heavy bolters, the lascannon or the turret). At one stage a Carnifex (way bad-ass in 2nd edition) was charging across and open field and this last crewman was firing the cannon again and again...missing. Eventually the Carnifex was about to hit the tank, so the crewman leapt out with his trusty laspistol and ran away...eventually being consumed by hormagaunts.

That kind of depth/silliness was lost when it became a commercial wargame. Keep in mind that during 2nd edition, Games Workshop was run by a bunch of geeks and nerds with little business savvy (so it would have probably folded had they not gone to a normal corporate structure). You could tell the guys who wrote the rules were mega-geeks and just threw the entire kitchen sink into the rulebooks.

I transitioned from WFB to W40k, and oneissue my friends and I had was not using enough terrain, especiallyin the middle of the battle field. It can therefore risk descending into a gunline shoot off.

Another issue I remember is that marines had such a high strategy rating that they ALWAYS got the first turn against Eldar. :(

I'll simply say this; having played 40K on/off for nearly 25 years...my favourite memories pretty much all extend from 2nd edition, because it was so thematic/narrative - something it lost after 3rd edition.

So much this. Even Gav Thorpe, at one point, has said that they went "too far" in the culling of material/rules from 2nd to 3rd. Something DID need to be done because the edition had become unwieldy, but I'll never forget seeing the what the codexes for 3rd looked like and thinking "Dude - that's a pamphlet not a codex. GTFO." 3rd remains the only edition I sat out entirely.

2) It was a large scale role-playing game and not a "wargame" by today's standards. Way more rules, way more mess, and way more thematic. Because of its role-playing heart, the game was also very subject to manipulation; so playing with decent human beings is key. There are several combinations in every army which you just "don't do" because it's a dick move. That's a discussion with your opponent.

This is also a pretty solid call. Eldar taking buckets of sustained fire dice, and Abaddon and his terminator body guard are some good examples of things that could potentially be very un-fun to play against if you were unprepared for them. There were also a lot of really nasty things you could do with 'nids at the time. I recall people not wanting to allow 'nids players to use the events table in their book as they thought it was OP. I always thought it was a fun/fluffy rule myself, but did see it win some games essentially on turn 1. YMMV

But yeah, it is definitely worth having a discussion before hand.

I played 2nd with completely ruthless gamers. Lots of turn 1 tablings.

 Fifty wrote:
I transitioned from WFB to W40k, and oneissue my friends and I had was not using enough terrain, especiallyin the middle of the battle field. It can therefore risk descending into a gunline shoot off.

Another issue I remember is that marines had such a high strategy rating that they ALWAYS got the first turn against Eldar. :(

Yep, even in the actual rulebook they suggest a very filled table with terrain - 2nd edition was pretty self-aware, with editors and writers chiming in frequently on how to play the game for max enjoyment. Same reason they canceled the virus outbreak strategy card, and would say "hey, don't use these combos ya jerks!".

Martel732 wrote:
I played 2nd with completely ruthless gamers. Lots of turn 1 tablings.

Oof, yeah, heartless competitive gamers can really poison an environment no matter the game.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I played 2nd with completely ruthless gamers. Lots of turn 1 tablings.

Oof, yeah, heartless competitive gamers can really poison an environment no matter the game.

It works better in most games than 2nd ed 40K.

That being said, I do miss the granularity of 2nd in this new era of homogenization.


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 Elbows wrote:

 Fifty wrote:
I transitioned from WFB to W40k, and oneissue my friends and I had was not using enough terrain, especiallyin the middle of the battle field. It can therefore risk descending into a gunline shoot off.

Another issue I remember is that marines had such a high strategy rating that they ALWAYS got the first turn against Eldar. :(

Yep, even in the actual rulebook they suggest a very filled table with terrain - 2nd edition was pretty self-aware, with editors and writers chiming in frequently on how to play the game for max enjoyment. Same reason they canceled the virus outbreak strategy card, and would say "hey, don't use these combos ya jerks!".

American gamers prided themselves on breaking this game in my experience. Pretty low bar.

 Spreelock wrote:
Hey everyone, this thread is all about 2nd edition of Warhammer 40k. I've just bought the boxed set and all codexes, and i'm planning to try out the retro version of the game. I've never had a chance before, as I started collecting at 3rd edition. The boxed set does not come with figures or terrain, but I think currently available models can be used to play. So, share your experience and thoughts about the game.

My experience?
Best edition I have ever played. Don't listen to naysayers as in my experience a lot of them didn't get the rules right when they played this edition as teenagers. I still play 2nd but with house rules. They are as follows:

-Alternate activation.
-No persistent effects apart from psi powers.
-Introduction of later released units (e. g. : CSM Raptors & Havocs).
-Limitation of special & heavy weapons according to squad size like it was done in the 4th Dark Angels codex. Reduces the amount of heavy weapons and makes the battlefield less deadly.
-No psykers of Lvl 3 or 4 unless you want to unleash Armageddon. Some armies will violate this restriction. Just use another appropriate model as a HQ like it was done in later editions.

Read the virus wargear & strategy card very carefully, if you want to use them. Some armies can deal with them and others will have difficulties.

My advice?
Download the Battle Bible for free. You get all army books and the rules.

So, it's the best after you rewrite half the rules?

I don't care for the only one fighter gets hits in melee system.

Well, logic would dictate that yes - it's his favourite system after re-writing rules.

I'd argue the same. I'd rather play a modified version of 2nd than a full, as-written version of any other edition. 8th in its early days was a close second...3rd-7th being what made me stop playing 40K for a good 6-7 years. He didn't state that 2nd edition was a brilliantly written game. "Best edition" can be simply the one in which he had the most fun, or enjoyed the most. You can be nitpicky and question his use of "Best" in place of "Most fun" but his post was pretty clear that he enjoys it.

-Alternate activation.

I had kind of forgotten about that but you're right. It was one of the few ways my marines and nids could deal with Eldar and their ability to rain sustained fire dice from the sky.

 warhead01 wrote:

At one point we were silly has had the blast infinity tall which was probably very wrong.

No, that was correct.

Having large number of blind grenades floating about tended to make things very awkward for shooty armies.

Close combat isn't very good compared to later editions.

I don't know about 'not good'... it was different, with fighting being resolved one pair of models at a time, which slowed things down considerably, but it resulted in some absolute nail-biter situations.

If you have a group of players into narrative games and want a 40k RPG 2nd edition is the best edition, if you have a competitive group it's probably the worst though as the sheer volume of rules creates a lot of broken combos. If you want to house rule for more balanced play, start by taking out the virus outbreak strategy card, then consider adding a highlander style list building rule to limit spam as 2nd is pretty free range in what you can take (to prevent whole armies of overwatching devastator squads etc).

Some cool stuff to look out for:
1. Legion of the damned mini codex in white dwarf from very near the end of 2nd (like the models came out, then 3rd hit immediately after).
2. Terminator vet sarges in regular squads.
3. Reaper autocannons being so ungodly that they were nerfed for every edition since to pay for their sins.
4. Ork warbikes having more dakka than most tanks.
5. Every player eventually going for a level 4 psyker with force rod plus a battery of level 1's.
6. Going into super granular detail whenever a vehicle is destroyed to see if it's data card specifies if the crew died, then disembarking them to make a new squad.
7. Characters getting off their bikes mid game as they were death traps.
8. There were some completely silly but very fun rules like imperial guard infantry squads splitting off from their heavy weapons teams.
9. Setting stuff on fire is always fun. No other edition of 40k has ever done the flamer justice compared to 2nd.