What 40K edition do you prefer and why?

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Insectum7**

4th ed was the best. 3.5 Codexes and 4th codexes were the peak of modularity and customization.

5th ed brought on hyper-TLOS, major high AP proliferation, terrible wound-tracking mechanics, and parking lot deployments.

**Insectum7**

Wyldhunt wrote:

6th - Just way too much random rolling and bookkeeping. Things like attaching special rules to objectives and giving warlords traits were fun ideas that were spoiled by making them random.

Ohh, I forgot about that! Yeah that was the edition I took Sicarius in every game, partially because it meant I had a fixed Warlord trait.

**Insectum7**

Grimtuff wrote:
A.T. wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
The wording in 4th was terrible and required dozens of pages of FAQ (which GW at the times refused to even do and we had to make fan FAQs) but the mechanics themselves were the best they've ever been
IIRC a warlord titan (size 4+) standing on a hill (size 3) could not shoot a target standing behind a area of low rubble (size 2) ... unless it stepped down off the hill first :p (or so the old 4e FAQ would suggest).

I get what they were trying to do with the 5e rules though. In 4e there were so many shenanigans relating to blocking your own line of sight, placing models at precise distances (being able to accurately eyeball range was a cheat code), and of course the disconnect between 4e line of sight being 'true' line of sight for cover but abstract line of sight for area cover.

Though they overcooked it with the 5e change trying to rework the whole mixed armour/characters in units rules from 4e into something... else.

Again. For the Nth time. This was ONLY and ONLY for area terrain. 40k had used TLOS since day 1 and it suddenly becoming a thing in 5th edition is a myth perpetuated by the internet.

3rd ed. Rulebook page 36- "Sometimes it may be hard to tell if a LOS is blocked or , so players must stoop over the table for a "model's eye view". This is the best way to see if LOS exists...
Enemy models and all vehicles, friend or foe, do block a unit's LOS if they are in the way, just like buildings and other terrain. enemy models will block the LOS to other models up to twice their height."

2nd ed. rulebook page 26- "However in some cases it will be difficult to tell if a LOS is blocked or not, and players must stoop over the table for a model's eye view. This is always the best way to determine if LOS exists- some players even use small periscopes or mirrors to check the views from their models!..."

TLOS. Pre 5th. Waddya know?

5th added the "True" to LOS when its rules punched through all those forests, ruins (and height X terrain) in what has to be one of the absolute dumbest moves ever. It was essentially "if you can see it, you can shoot it". Hence the "true".

But it made for awful battlefields where one could shoot practically anywhere.

**Insectum7**

aphyon wrote:
Insectum, as HBMC and i are big fans of the matter of TLOS is not as big as a problem as you think if you as a players bring enough terrain including stuff that is solid and blocks TLOS as well as looks like it belongs on the battlefield. with current real world experience with 5th ed. there is more than enough terrain that provides good cover and/or blocks LOS.

Yes it's true, one can just build/buy big solid LOS blockers.

The problem I have with that is twofold.
1: Much of the commonly available terrain from GW or other manufacturers is ruins, or otherwise "visually perforated".

2: Imo the bigger issue is that "solid" blockers are generally the sort of thing that also blocks movement. Having movement blocking terrain is fine to a point, but being able to block LOS while still allow models (especially infantry) to move about is a great feature to have.

**Insectum7**

aphyon wrote:
Ah but that is the beauty of 3d printed terrain. many of my large LOS blocking buildings have interiors and removable roofs. won a 5th ed game last year that way by sneaking my scouts through the marine HQ building (dawn of war from war scenery) to score an objective.

Sure, but I don't want every table to be a ruined (or not ruined) city, and options for vehicle movement is nice too. Forests or similar pieces ideally block LOS, give cover to models within, and still allow big models to push through them. And for ease of use having flat templates (even fabric) to define forest extents, then having a collection of individually based trees that you can move around so models can be placed appropriately, is great.

**Insectum7**

catbarf wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
catbarf wrote:

I would have liked to see an iterative middle-ground sort of system. Start with the all-or-nothing as a base, but work in an edge case where the AP is significant enough to degrade the armor but without circumventing it entirely. Force saves to be re-rolled if the AP is equal to the armor, or something along those lines.

Perhaps the old flat AP system with rules like Breaching (X+) or Rending (X+) where if you roll an X+ to wound the shot ignores your armor; the designer could adjust the X+ to figure out what "percentage" of wounds pierced different armor classes, letting certain minis (better than the AP of the weapon of course) get their saves against the rest of the wounds... Hmmm.

I understand why they did it the way they did for HH2.0, but I strongly dislike the practice of kludging special rules onto only certain weapons to address game-wide issues with the mechanics.

I return to autocannons as the perfect example: There's nothing particularly exotic about them that warrants special rules, but otherwise Marine armor being just as likely to stop an autocannon shell as an autopistol round doesn't sit right with me.

HH being a Marine-heavy game exposes the limitations of the all-or-nothing system pretty starkly. I think they did the best they could with 2.0 short of throwing it out and completely redoing it, but the AP modifier system actually suits Horus Heresy better than it does 40K.

I agree with this point somewhat. There's still the rolling-to-wound aspect of the weapon that's part of the "does this weapon do damage?" question, and the old system held the Autocannons wounding on a 2 while the pistol wounds on a 5 (and the two shots), so once you put it all together the big gun is still far more likely to do result in a kill. But while those relationships work, they still feel a little funny.

I always felt like 4+ armor in that paradigm sorta got the worst of it. While AP 3 weapons were comparatively rare, it still felt like troops with "fancy" 4+ armor were still dealt with a little too casually simply because Heavy Bolters, Shuriken Cannons, Whirlwinds, ets. ets. were all AP 4 and would just cut those units down real fast.

**Insectum7**

H.B.M.C. wrote:
catbarf wrote:
If you have to add special rules to an autocannon to make it behave 'correctly'- not a volkite death ray, or a grav gun, or a conversion beamer, or any of the other weirdness in the setting, just a big plain self-loading cannon- something's wrong with the core rules.
Or a limitation of a D6 system.

Imo 40K can't really be anything else, the D6 is just too accessible. They/we just have to work around it.

**Insectum7**

Unit1126PLL wrote:
I think the general issue is that armies that could tailor against Marines WOULD tailor against Marines, and in real life, the appropriate weapon for the job will reliably destroy it's target.

In HH2.0, they made it so there's almost NO appropriate weapon for marine killing, to try to fight this phenomenon and make Marines the stars.

Unfortunately, this has resulted in anti-TANK weapons becoming spammed, not because tanks are such a huge problem but because they're the next-most-appropriate tool for the job against Marine armies. The Vanquisher cannon is the best Russ against Marines, not because of all it's specific anti-tank and anti-monster special rules, but because it's the only AP2 tank gun on the Russ chassis. 10 men Lascannon squads aren't taken because you need a volley of 10 lascannons to kill a tank. It's because 10 lascannons will kill Marines and Terminators better than krak missiles and volkite culverins.

It's more proof for the axiom that "when marines are the most common enemy, then the best weapons will be the ones that kill Marines most efficiently" - even in a world where the Designers have gone out of their way to remove the entire category of "elite infantry killing weapons" - people just shifted to anti-tank.

I feel this speaks to the "point costs for upgrades" thread as well. Weapons can theoretically have different "roles" and be sidegrades, but those big, high AP weapons always wind up feeling more worthwhile because of the array of high-value targets one can meaningfully engage. If you don't have decent AT, anit-MC, or anti-Elite weapons, you can basically find yourself to be **** out of luck. Whereas if you take a plethora of them, they'll basically always be useful because you can remove those big-time threats in short order, and then pound away at MEQs or anything else dangerous, while whatever small arms in your force deal with the rest.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

A.T. wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote:
It's more proof for the axiom that "when marines are the most common enemy, then the best weapons will be the ones that kill Marines most efficiently"
I've not played HH2.0 - what are heavy weapon costs like, still mirroring the big price crash from 5th?

Lascannons and plamas cannons were 35pts each until late 4th and 35pts for the pair by mid 5th edition. As I recall the subsequent HH 1.0 ruleset dropped heavy weapon costs lower still.

It depended on the squad, but yeah. Lascannons and PCs were 35 points for Devastators. Missile Launcher and Multimeltas 20, then HB at 15. Fort he Tactical Squad the costs were 15, 10 and 5 in the same order. The big premium for the Heavies made you really think about their deployment.

**Insectum7**

Tyran wrote:
Insectum7 wrote:
I feel this speaks to the "point costs for upgrades" thread as well. Weapons can theoretically have different "roles" and be sidegrades, but those big, high AP weapons always wind up feeling more worthwhile because of the array of high-value targets one can meaningfully engage. If you don't have decent AT, anit-MC, or anti-Elite weapons, you can basically find yourself to be **** out of luck. Whereas if you take a plethora of them, they'll basically always be useful because you can remove those big-time threats in short order, and then pound away at MEQs or anything else dangerous, while whatever small arms in your force deal with the rest.

Partly, IMHO one of the requirements for a sidegrades approach to function is that you need a wide variety of targets in the meta.
It goes without saying 40k has never been good at achieving that.

If horde was viable then anti-horde weapons could be true sidegrades AT weapons.

That being said it does feel there is some degree of "sidegradeness" between AT weapons and anti-elite weapons at the moment.

It'd be great to see some true hordes hit the meta again. Some of my favorite games were against this Ork player who would field 140 Boyz or something. It's fun to see the battlefield smothered in troops, and it has at least occasiinally offered a unique challenge to play with/against.

I have 120 painted Gants waiting for the opportunity.

**Insectum7**

JNAProductions wrote:
Though apparently, 7th is more popular than Rogue Trader.

More people probably played 7th than Rogue Trader, and there's probably a good many RT players that are no longer with us to even vote.

Rogue Trader has the distinction of launching the whole enterprise. It was "popular enough"

**Insectum7**

Wyldhunt wrote:

See, I feel like that kind of falls apart when some armies are just really built for MSU rather than chunky units.

Oh yeah, kill points were teeerrrrriiiblle.

**Insectum7**

Arschbombe wrote:
Insectum7 wrote:

Oh yeah, kill points were teeerrrrriiiblle.

Interesting to see hate for kill points. I didn't care one way or another, but in my local meta there were a lot of people who just preferred long board edges and kill points (Pitched Battle/ Annihilation). They liked to, as Rick Priestly would say, "line 'em up and go."

It's because, as the upthread poster noted, kill points were really rough for some armies. DE Raiders were easy points, as were Ork Trukks. It was a crappy way to tally "value destroyed".

A 30 pt. Trukk being worth the same as a 250 point Terminator Squad makes even less sense than Power Level

**Insectum7**

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
Insectum7 wrote:
A 30 pt. Trukk being worth the same as a 250 point Terminator Squad makes even less sense than Power Level

It makes perfect sense given the context: that it's a balancing mechanism to offset the advantages eight trukks have against a single terminator squad when playing the objective missions. Penalizing MSU lists is the entire purpose of it.

It might have been their goal to mitigate MSU, but Kill Points as implemented was huge overkill for that.