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Simplycasualgaming wrote:So I got into warhammer with 8th ed. Leading up to it I would watch all these batreps from 7th ed and it made me like space marines and chaos space marines with all the different weapons and such. Then 8th ed came out and it is nothing but boring primaris and CSM sucking. So which oldhammer edition is your favorite, cause I am thinking about talking my friends into trying an older edition for funs.

I have a dedicated thread on here for this very topic.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789567.page

Mezmorki has done impressive work with his prohammer project.
However our group avoids making any of our own rules. because 3rd-7th are cross compatible all we did was import a few rules from editions 3, 4, 6, & 7 into 5th because 5th has the best overall core rules. but some of the rules were done better in other editions (like overwatch, and grenade throwing, both of which work well in 5th considering how much less lethal the game is overall).

We play it regularly and crossing over codexes form one edition to the other against each other within the confines of 5th edition and have found that it is not imbalanced. Even when we import newer models into the older codexes(very easy to do as i explain in my topic).

The key is to have the right mindset for the game. it was never intended to be tournament balanced. it was meant to be- a game among friends where you play the factions strengths and weaknesses in the way they would behave in the 40K universe-. As such many of the 3rd and 4th edition codexes and themed lists are favorites among the players. playing the game is the best part about it, winning or losing is just a way to end the adventure.

Mezmorki wrote:One thing I'll say about OldHammer is that you can find a lot of codexes for pretty cheap used on Amazon. I've gotten any codex I needed from old editions for usually just a few bucks, which is great.

The other upside of OldHammer, assuming you get a group to join you on the endeavor, is that you don't have to play the waiting game of "when will the next codex come out for my army!?" It's all released, it's static, the codex rules aren't going to change on you, etc. It's nice to play with a complete and static ruleset.

If I had to play a "pure" version of the game, I'd be a toss up between 5th edition vs. 4th edition. I'd probably go 5th edition and use the following codexes:

- Space Marines (5th)
- Blood Angles (5th)
- Dark Angles (4th)
- Space Wolves (5th)
- Black Templars (4th)
- Chaos Marines (3.5 edition)
- Orks (3rd) + Feral Orks (3rd, in chapter approved)
- Tyranids (5th probably?)
- Tau (4th)
- Necrons (5th)
- Dark Eldar (5th)
- Eldar (4th, but maybe stretch to 6th and break the rule)
- Imperial Guard (3.5 edition with regimental doctrines, 4th ed catachans also)
- Witch Hunters (3rd edition)
- Daemonhunters (3rd)

I made this crazy codex + edition chart once upon a time for reference:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m5Opo0yRVuHDfnqBTlSDKExlxzpL20rL0jL5d-TeZ2g/edit?usp=sharing

I mostly agree with this list with a few exceptions

.Dark angels-3.5 mini dex it may not have as many options as the 4th ed codex but it has all the flavor and theme that makes them dark angels.
.Orks-definatley 4th ed codex, it was used half way through 5th and has so much fun in it.
.Tyranids-again 4th ed codex. some of the best biomorph options for making unique armies and quite good for importing newer bugs into.
.imperial guard-5th hands down. 3rd had the doctrines, and we miss them but they are not worth loosing the options in the 5th ed book.
.addendum to imperial guard-3rd edition chapter approved imperial guard armored company-one of the guys at the store uses it.
.gene stealer cults 7th
.mechanicus 7th
.pure chaos demon armies-4th (without the summoning free armies spam)

I have had all sorts of silly fun fighting the 4th ed ork dex.

It was a bit of an expensive build but i got smashed by a mad doc grotsnik cybork ork list....orks with a 5++ save are surprisingly hard to kill.

earlier this year i did a battle of my 5th ed marine list VS a 4th ed ork horde list, it was a downright bloodletting but the orks managed to pull it off.

I am with Vaktathi on this one. other than the wonky wound allocation system. the second most thing i see complaints about is the "parking lot" from the 5th ed detractors.

The reality was that in 4th unless you were a skimmer you were better off walking behind the transport than being in it.

The big rub was the eldar and to a lesser extent tau skimmer. space marine skimmers were limited to land speeders that died to everything being only AV 10 and no option for extra armor unless you wanted to drop the points to give them the POTMS upgrade.

Eldar skimmers almost never died and the base transports were also capable main battle tanks. devil fish were fine anti-infantry platforms and continued to be so in 5th

The changes to 5th made vehicles worth taking (But the assault rules were more tactically challenging in 4th which is why our group still uses them). now that doesn't make the infantry 40k players happy but vehicles became what they were supposed to be. it was a balancing act. AT weapons became more available as a result across all armies. In the hundreds of games i got in 5th ed ( i played on average 3 every week for 4 years) dealing with vehicles has never been a problem and still isn't now that we have gone back to playing 5th with a few rules fixes.

We just did a 5th ed game last weekend and i lost both my land raiders to A. railguns and B. haywire grenades. it was a game where both sides ran plenty of vehicles (i had 8 counting the lucius drop pods, but they don't actually do anything after they land so i don't really count them.) and he had 4. The Tau won that game quite handily.

The defensive weapons strength was 6 in 3rd and it dropped to 5 in 4th and to 4 in 5th IIRC. our group went back to 5 because it made sense as S5 weapons are primarily defensive anti-infantry mounts-burst cannons, heavy bolters etc...


One side note since he mentioned it, i recommend you go back and look at the original rules for warhounds and other "titan" class vehicle before apocalypse ever got released.

FW made them over costed, centerpiece models that were understandably harder to kill but in reality, didn't do that much damage because they were made with normal 2K scale games in mind. my warhound with a plasma blast gun/vulkan mega bolter clocks in at a 5th ed astounding points cost of 810, has a single 5" template weapon and a slightly longer range assault cannon with 10 shots instead of 4. Both weapons also had a 12" minimum range they could not fire within. they also were only BS4 not 5.

Well, you are a rare exception. 6th is nearly universally despised. the numbers bear it out. it nearly killed the game and got quickly replaced in just over 1 year (14 months). i know a few people who started with 6th and felt a big improvement in 7th until they started spamming formations.

8th and by extension 9th are a completely different game. it may say 40K on the box but it feels nothing like 40K of the previous 5 editions that had many identical core mechanics.

If you care strongly for the flavor of your army and want the peculiarities of your faction to feel very special and make the game turn around them, then you are probably going to like the modern editions.

Or not, in fact i think 9th is only second worse than 6th, if i want what you describe i am grabbing the 3.5 chaos codex or the 3rd ed index astartes books for things like white scars or pretty much any codex made for 3rd or 4th edition with only a few exceptions. the rules that make them different are built into the faction and do not require a resource mechanic that suddenly makes my force stop being able to operate like it should because i ran out of enough command points to play a stratagem that used to be a trait/ability the faction naturally had.


I think a fellow dakka poster once said it best. the older version of the game made it feel like these were your dudes, and they were fighting in the way they would fight if they are in that scenario/setting, not necessarily the best way they should fight.

A good example is our khorne player. he uses the 3.5 chaos dex in our 5th ed games-berserkers are holding the objective, the smart thing is to hold it and move it away from the enemy, what would berserkers actually do while holding the magic McGuffin if they see and enemy they can assault? the fluff says go hit them with my pointy stick, and when they blood rage that is exactly what they try to do. i do not need a stratagem to make them do it or be fearless or use chain axes etc... that is all built into their specific rules.

So yes as i have said before 8th/9th edition is not 40K, it is a different game with the 40K name with many of the same characters and troupes and you can use your minis to play either. in fact, we found that using 8ths simple rule set makes a good template for playing 10K+ games of epic 40K. it is to abstract to make a normal scale 2k game interesting but it is enough to make putting down half a chapter of marines on the table with all their support elements play fast and interesting at such a large scale (and a fraction of the cost).

I have the 2nd ed guard codex, the leman russ has 2 pages of rules.

Kind of how we are currently using a combination of kill teams/combat patrol from the 4th ed BRB for our kill team games now.

Good stuff all around.

PenitentJake wrote:
I'm surprised no one who hates 40k has chimed in yet to chastise people for blaming players for what must obviously be an evil conspiracy by the worst company in the world. That usually happens within one or two post of someone criticizing netlists.

The thing is, you're mostly talking to a group of players here who are into the old version of the game for the fun of the game and playing to the lore.

Sure the "netlists" existed in the older editions, and we all knew "that guy" who would copy tournament lists. and some of them were hard to crack, but not to the extent we have examples of now.

I have faced the double lash prince/nurgle bubble wrap list, the iron warriors heavy support army (still do), the carnifex horde list and even the dreaded eldar corsair list from FW. i do not auto-lose those games and sometimes i win.

Sometimes the comp minded players find ways to twist the rules in a way that even GW has admitted they never intended, and sometimes we even build stupid lists just to try them out to see how stupid they are...like a jakero themed list for the 5th ed GK codex....so many monkeys

Part of the problem has been with the successive editions of the game with more and more focus on "balance" in a way the older editions and players never saw the game within their regular casual player groups.

I think if you're willing to look past 4th's "basic" missions, you'll find a lot of fun.

Yes, i love all the optional game mode rules in the 4th ed BRB. we have upscaled some of the mission layouts for full scale games like the bunker defense mission and the convoy assault.

Which of course is like a modern warfare game as your lightly armoured transports aren't meant to mix it up with AT weapons, your dismounts and support should neutralise those before you can continue on.

In the abstract nature of the 40K game in distances, you require the transports to get you across the table so your infantry can dismount and deal with said threat. a properly laid out table will have enough LOS blocking terrain that makes using said transports an advantage if not necessary for non-horde or vehicle-less armies. 5th ed got the damage table correct IMHO, sure you had a chance to drop a vehicle with a well-placed shot (like in real life) however you were not nearly guaranteed a kill every time you hit like with the 4th ed tables.

You are mathhammering, dice averages are just that, an average. real world experience with 4th ed VS 5th was that unless you were in a devilfish or wave serpent your transports were pretty well death traps because of the combination of the vehicle damage tables and the rules for the infantry being transported when the vehicle exploded or got wrecked.

5th was an overall improvement over 4th in many areas of core rules save the wound allocation mechanic that got abused and vehicle assault rules.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think my Chimeras are 100 flat. 85 weapons, HKM and Extra Armor I think gives them 100. The assault platoon runs 103 because they have smoke.

Which weapons do you use, standard Multilaser and HB or some other combo? I remember seeing (dual?) Heavy Flamers occasionally. Am I remembering that right?

FW had several alternate turrets for it. the standard out of the box was the multi-laser with a hull heavy bolter.


IIRC turret options were
. autocannon
. twin-linked heavy flamer
. twin-linked heavy bolter

I know you also had the option to swap the hull weapon for a heavy flamer or a multi-melta

 Blackie wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
In the unlikely event I play 4e again (not because it's bad, just because I'm being realistic about the prospect) I'm going to get rid of the disembark on a penetrating hit rule. I think that mostly solves the problems with transports in 4e. Being entangled after a destroyed result is mostly fine I reckon.

That's one of my issues with 4th, I played only orks back then and all my transports were paper things that carried melee dudes with very low saves. I vastly prefer 5th edition rules about vehicles.

Especially given that you used the 4th ed codex halfway through 5th, i own a copy of the dex myself-love that ramshackle table.

Games Workshop instead added the hull point mechanic, making vehicles get destroyed by an additional method and when that obviously failed they simply turned them into giant rolling meat sacks for simplicity's sake. Some really like this, but I can't fathom why.

Agreed, having a vehicle mechanic in the damage table that made them feel more like vehicles, then stacking a secondary damage mechanic that was way to easy to inflict punished you for taking them (6th/7th ed), then going totally abstract with 8th was a bridge to far.

I think the mix Andy Chambers pulled off for DUST was a good compromise. they still had wounds, but facings mattered for weapon firing arcs, and there was damage reduction all the way up to immunity as the armor class (toughness) went up and the power of the weapon being used went down.

As an example, small arms could hurt things like open topped light walkers or artillery tractors up to armor class 3 but anything that was a proper tank (class 4) or even heavier was immune. If they had done that with 8th ed 40K i think it would have been a better mechanic.

Well i have a friend i play games with online who lives in Perth, does that count for you H.B.M.C.?