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Hi all, my group has slowly been getting back into 40k and we've concluded that we simply don't have the time, energy, budget, interest, etc. in trying to keep up.

Right now, we have marines, CSM, IG, some inquisition, variously including some FW characters and vehicles. We also have GSC and DW from that old game, and most of the Blackstone goons/characters.

We're 100% open to rules mods and reasonable proxies (for instance, a rogue trader might be an inquisitor, and GSC/Blackstone baddies might be traitor guard or whatever).

We all generally prefer 8th edition vehicle rules, but are open to earlier editions so, do people have any recommendations when would be a good "snapshot"? Either at some point in 8th (which felt like it went through a lot of editions).

So, in short, is there a "sweet spot" people feel has a nice mix of balance and interest? Moderate but not huge preference towards sometime during 8th but also possibly earlier.

Mezmorki's Prohammer is one of the most complete oldhammer projects I've seen on this forum; it's based on the 5e core rules but has backwards/forwards-compatibility material so you can use Codexes from anywhere from 3e-7e if you have a particular one you like. It can be found at https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/796101.page.

My own oldhammer project (linked in my signature) is a more comprehensive overhaul where I've attempted to rebuild army books specifically for my core rules; it's less finished and not particularly tested, and takes more random bits of 30k ethos than Mezmorki's.

If you want one of GW's editions to pick up rather than an existing homebrew project I'd suggest starting from either 5th or 8th and then fiddling with the army books; 5th is probably the cleanest and most straightforward the 3e-7e rules have ever been (it cleaned up some of the wonkier and less developed vehicle rules from 4th, but didn't yet have the unit type/USR/statline bloat from 6th), if you common-sense nerf a few of the sillier things in the Marine variant books and some of the not-flyer models it almost just works out of the box. 8e's going to be a little more work just because there are problems with the math GW did when writing the Indexes, but if you start from the Indexes, do some common-sense re-statting, and then introduce a smaller and more curated pool of stratagems/WTs/relics/whatever you could probably make a perfectly functional game right there.

There's never been a time when you could take all of GW's stuff right out of the box and it'll all work correctly, but I think either 5e or Index 8e are the times when you could patch it yourself more easily than at other times.

8th edition is ok as long as you play with the first SM codex. And everyone else with the same edition's codex. Otherewise I recommend 3rd or 5th.

Avoid 8th indexes at all cost, most unbalanced 40k ever. Especially if one of the players has Astra Militarum.

 Blackie wrote:
...Avoid 8th indexes at all cost, most unbalanced 40k ever. Especially if one of the players has Astra Militarum.

Clarification: I don't suggest index 8th because it was particularly balanced out of the box; I suggest it because it's a very straightforward baseline to hack on. Once you introduce Codexes with their stratagems, relics, WTs, and general combo-play it becomes much harder to glance at statlines and see quickly what stat/price tweaks are going to break the game; Codex 8th played better, but it's a lot harder to tweak.

Unfortunately points costs in indexes are so absurd that I find impossible to have fun playing with those books. AM in particular had tons of undercosted stuff, a barely optimized list can easily break the game even without all the stuff/combos that are available in the codexes.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
...Avoid 8th indexes at all cost, most unbalanced 40k ever. Especially if one of the players has Astra Militarum.

Clarification: I don't suggest index 8th because it was particularly balanced out of the box; I suggest it because it's a very straightforward baseline to hack on. Once you introduce Codexes with their stratagems, relics, WTs, and general combo-play it becomes much harder to glance at statlines and see quickly what stat/price tweaks are going to break the game; Codex 8th played better, but it's a lot harder to tweak.

Some armies only worked at all because of their stratagems and relics. Trying to bring the train wrecks that some of index armies were to enjoyable levels is just as much effort as just writing your own codices.

If you don't like the whole relic and stratagem stuff (which is a valid opinion to have), I would just directly go for mezmorki's prohammer.
If you liked 8th edition style rules, I would go for game right before the launch of space marines 8.5, but allow PA for all factions that aren't loyalist space marines - some of them direly need their PA rules to at least be fun. Another option would be to just ban supplement rules.

Battle Bible from interwebz.

Here's what Id do:

8th edition, post GSC codex, Marines are playing with 1.0 codex BUT:

-All subfaction traits for all armies apply to all units.

-All marine/CSM units get +1 to their Wounds and +1A on the charge (if that wasnt already a rule at that point in time). They keep their current point costs, maybe bumping up by 1 or 2 if they feel overpowering, IIRC at the time they were quite underpowered. Additionally I'd slap '-1 damage' from dreadnoughts on basically all marine vehicle units.

-Use 9th edition's cover system. It's just a better terrain ruleset than 8th by a country mile and it's fully compatible.

I highly recommend 5th ed. I've been trying to make a top-up to 5th edition I'm calling 5th ed. reforged! (Link is in my bio).