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I would say the proof is in the pudding. In my area, you can no longer impulse buy anything because the shelves at every store are sold out constantly and if you don't get to the store the same day they get a shipment in be ready to not buy anything for a week or two. For instance, I've still never see Custodes on the shelf despite several stores claiming they keep ordering them but they get snatched up before they can even put them out. Even the official GW store by me is missing tons of stuff because they cant keep up.

On top of this local "evidence", I'm noticing 40k events keep breaking their personal best attendance records and selling out of tickets same day just look at LVO, Adipticon, Long War Doubles ect.

Despite some of the very vocal online haters, I think it would be hard to argue that this isn't the best most successful edition of 40k ever.

 Eldarsif wrote:

 Galef wrote:
8th edition is the reason my LGS (which sold GW stuff at 20% off) went from nearly fully stocked to empty shelves every visit.
I can no longer go to the LGS and make an impulse buy because their is nearly NOTHING on their entire wall, which used to have hundreds of boxes (which is probably good, but it does suck).

My area seems to love 8th and it is clearly drawing in new players

8th edition just plays well in my opinion. It may have issues and all, but damn it plays well. I am seeing more and more people locally joining in on 8th due to that. I think some of the reasons why it plays better is that they removed templates and vehicle facings. Means less debating and more playing.

I have gone to 6 tournaments since January, with 15-25 people per tournament, and I have yet to see a rule discussion, or people forgetting their own rules, or playing wrongly.

It's 50/50 right now with Rogue Trader. But every game I play in 8th tips the scale more and more for 8th. I really do miss some of the insanity from RT.

Racerguy180 wrote:
It's 50/50 right now with Rogue Trader. But every game I play in 8th tips the scale more and more for 8th. I really do miss some of the insanity from RT.

Back in the day when it was Warhammer fantasy, IN SPACE!!!!

Most successful? Arguably yes.

Best edition? Depends entirely on what you want to do with it.

Best tournament edition? Never been a good 40K edition for tournaments...so this is a circular argument which will never be settled, but generally speaking - no...tournament 40K is still a disaster.

I'd say it's the most enjoyable one for me, but I'm a rules tinkerer/game designer and I don't just huff and pout when something doesn't appeal to me. My fellow gamers are all about house-ruling cover, terrain, special scenario rules, narratives etc. We also don't build douche-bag lists. So, with that caveat it's an excellent game if you put some of your own effort in. To put this in perspective my friends and I went to work on what to fix the second 8th came out. We're not beholden to a rulebook, or GW written scenarios etc. It takes a few small changes to make the game 10x more playable than it's written.

It's not an amazing game, 40K has never been, really. But the people who say it's a disaster or the "worst" game in the world haven't played it (or will defend their opinion having played it twice).

Only problem I have with finding stuff for sale that I want is that both of my armies are in desperate need of new models: Sororitas and Craftworld. Which means 90% of my range is web store only.

Yeah, that's why I cannot get what I want from walking into a shop :(

I have lots of nostalgia about 2nd Edition, and I think that 3rd Edition was a mistake in terms of increasing the model count and brining in dice buckets. They tried to streamline some things with 3rd Ed to allow for more models on the table but ended up with holes in the rules that could be exploited. 4th and 5th were attempts to patch those holes - workable editions but each was derailed. I did not enjoy 6th Edition and I got off the ride in 7th. My stuff spent three years in boxes in the basement.

I am really enjoying 8th Edition - its fun and clean. I have had very few rules disputes in games (well, just one so far actually), and we rarely have a head-scratching moment poring over a rulebook during a game. Balance isn't perfect but its way better that 6th and 7th. Perhaps most importantly, the local 40K community is thriving whereas it had been struggling in 7th Ed. You have to reserve spaces in our tourneys early or be stuck spectating (we have a 40 player cap). This is purely anecdotal, but our last local tourney sold out the same weekend as another town a couple of hours away also sold out a 60 player tourney.

2nd ed was a pure dumpster fire, imo. No redeeming features as it was SO easy to exploit for Nids, Eldar, and CSM.

Martel732 wrote:
2nd ed was a pure dumpster fire, imo. No redeeming features as it was SO easy to exploit for Nids, Eldar, and CSM.

2nd Edition Eldar were, indeed, overpowered. That is a constant! I thought that 2nd Ed was workable with the "Tournament Rules" in use at Grand Tournaments. These placed caps on psychic powers and wargear. I note that at the 1997 Grand Tournament that I attended every game was played to completion. There were no games "timing out." I enjoyed the melee rules in 2nd Ed and the relative freedom with list construction. I also had hair then.

Overall I like 8th better just because it’s much easier to find someone to play with due to an increased player base. However, I preferred many of the rules from 7th better.

Pros
Larger player base
Better army balance
No stupid formation bonuses
Rules don’t contradict themselves *wrong*
No scatter on deep-strike and reserves on turn 1
Split fire
Strategems

Cons
No vehicle facings
Character targeting vs attaching to units
No templates
If one model is visible/in range then the whole unit can take wounds
Terrain and cover rules for vehicles.

Rules don't contradict themselves...

So Inescapable Accuracy and that one Ranger Stratagem that only lets them get hit on 6s is just nothing, then?

As much as I enjoy 8th edition, I liked 2nd edition more. Every game was an adventure, you never really knew what to expect.

8th is very sterile and balanced and easy to play by comparison. Once one side gets the lead, it's hard to find a way to lose. By contrast, I would play some 2nd edition games where all that was left was a Chaos Lord and an Aspiring Champion, and they would wreck some poor IG army by themselves.

Whether that represents poor game design or not is irrelevant. It was fun.

Yes, easily. Anyone who said they liked 6th or 7th better just played with a group of people who were really really bad at the game.

5th and parts of the other editions I could see arguments for, but disagree

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
2nd ed was a pure dumpster fire, imo. No redeeming features as it was SO easy to exploit for Nids, Eldar, and CSM.

2nd Edition Eldar were, indeed, overpowered. That is a constant! I thought that 2nd Ed was workable with the "Tournament Rules" in use at Grand Tournaments. These placed caps on psychic powers and wargear. I note that at the 1997 Grand Tournament that I attended every game was played to completion. There were no games "timing out." I enjoyed the melee rules in 2nd Ed and the relative freedom with list construction. I also had hair then.

Play against 100 hormagaunts in 2nd and then talk to me.

I prefer 8th because most of the time, it's pretty intuitive. Less all or nothing interactions.
So my melee unit in CC with a drop pod automatically hits it. But now it's invisible, so the drop pod is invulterable.
Same situation with a rhino, and I hit on 6, but since the pod is immobile invisibility's wording says that it cannot be hit.
8th is a relief.

ERJAK wrote:
Yes, easily. Anyone who said they liked 6th or 7th better just played with a group of people who were really really bad at the game.

5th and parts of the other editions I could see arguments for, but disagree

People who really loved 6th/7th probably lucked into an army that was one of the prime offenders of the balancing issues and didn't have to invest a ton of cash in Riptides or Wraithknights or the such.

The rest of us had the wrong model composition to really abuse these combinations and probably didn't want to drop the hundreds of dollars needed to finish off the full block of cheese. Thus we saw 7th edition for what it was: roflstomping people who didn't want to play the bleeding edge of cheddar, or simply arguing about the rules interaction until the game became the background noise.

40k is what happens when Scale Creep, IGOUGO, and Turn 1 Threat Projection collide.

8th is the culmination of all of those, especially with the changes to Reserves, cover, and Alternating Deployment (instead of "go first, deploy-first" unless Seized) all making choosing to go second an extremely niche-case. Add in "Rule of One", Snowflake/contradictory FAQs, and assorted forms of Fake Balance and the game is still bloated, just in a different manner.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Rules don't contradict themselves...

So Inescapable Accuracy and that one Ranger Stratagem that only lets them get hit on 6s is just nothing, then?

I stand corrected. Haven’t heard of that one.

I imagine that there will be more as time goes on. So yeah... I’m gonna cross that off my list.

 Kellevil wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Rules don't contradict themselves...

So Inescapable Accuracy and that one Ranger Stratagem that only lets them get hit on 6s is just nothing, then?

I stand corrected. Haven’t heard of that one.

I imagine that there will be more as time goes on. So yeah... I’m gonna cross that off my list.

Yeah. And I guarantee you there's more. Just look at the YMDC thread.

Not ragging on you for liking 8th or anything-just pointing out that your assessment wasn't fully accurate.

Because, despite me preferring 7th, I do enjoy 8th.

Martel732 wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
2nd ed was a pure dumpster fire, imo. No redeeming features as it was SO easy to exploit for Nids, Eldar, and CSM.

2nd Edition Eldar were, indeed, overpowered. That is a constant! I thought that 2nd Ed was workable with the "Tournament Rules" in use at Grand Tournaments. These placed caps on psychic powers and wargear. I note that at the 1997 Grand Tournament that I attended every game was played to completion. There were no games "timing out." I enjoyed the melee rules in 2nd Ed and the relative freedom with list construction. I also had hair then.

Play against 100 hormagaunts in 2nd and then talk to me.

No need to be rude. Have you ever been happy with an edition? I played plenty of 2nd Ed including a national grand tourney. I played against Nid hordes (always a threat to my Dark Angels) but it was Eldar that was the clear top threat in my neck of the woods. By 1998, though, folks were finding loopholes in codexes (Space Wolves termies for one) as competitive play and the internet worked as an accelerator. They had to do something, but 3rd was a tough shift for me. I maintain my nostalgia for 2nd Ed, but I do think that 8th is the best since (or maybe even thus far).

Their willingness to make adjustments along the way with this edition is a strong point for me.

8th seems to be the best so far by a long shot. That's not saying its a perfect system, but its better than the others.

8th edition is an enormous improvement on that revolting and abominable manurefilled perversion that was 7th edition. But 8th is still not good enough. List building is still more important than in-game decisions, and too many games are decided before they even begin.

But at least we don't roll for invisibility on that stupid telepathy table anymore. I can't believe we actually used to do that.

Agreed.

List building be so important is not by accident fellas. Its hugely pushed by a lot of people and is a selling point.

 auticus wrote:
Its hugely pushed by a lot of people and is a selling point.

By whom and where?

Everywhere you look for over a decade. Just spark up a conversation about balance and discuss how you want listbuilding to not be so dominant, you'll get a train of people that will tell you a variation of that being boring if 2000 points were equal to 2000 points regardless of composition.

When AOS was first dropped one of the biggest complaints against the fan comps was that it was "too balanced" and that listbuilding was boring because everything was too even as well.

People want their liistbuilding and they want it to play a heavy role in the game. Even when Bottle was posting and now he's a gw dev he had talked about how he thought listbuilding should play a prominent role in the games. Face book groups produce the same data. Game dev seminars talk about how iimportant this facet of game design is today.

I only played the Dark Vengeance scenarios and Heralds of Ruin Kill Team of 7th Edition. And I will say that I think 7th worked pretty okay as a skirmish game reworked through Heralds of Ruin. If I found a group willing to play that, I totally would. I probably would prefer 7th edition over 8th edition Heralds of Ruin, but I don't know for sure as I haven't looked into their 8th edition.

I haven't played much 8th edition yet. Compared to other miniatures wargames most of which were written by GW alumni, I can say 8th edition is okay. 8th edition is much better for the size of games typical of most players play it at than 7th edition. I am not overly impressed with it, but it is good enough to get me to play games using it.

Reading through the comments here I can agree that while less so than 7th, 8th edition is still a rather simple game with needlessly complex parts to make it seem deeper that it is. It still feels like it takes three steps to accomplish something when two should be sufficient. Though, I am glad GW rolled a bunch of special rules into the stats. I can read that something has claws that rend metal like tissue paper in the unit description. I don't also need a special rule that states this unit has addition armor piercing because of that.

I get where players coming from with 8th still having an IGOUGO setup. It doesn't really bother me. One of my favorite wargames (Dust Warfare) had that. Of course 36" was the max range of pretty much everything which forced maneuver. Plus, Dust Warfare had a subphase and reactions that allowed the non-active player some options. If 40K ever abandoned this, it wouldn't bother me even if I know I am pretty terrible with pure alternating activation games (strangely I am good with random activation).

I am super happy about the dropping of templates. I stopped playing Bolt Action partly because its 2nd edition add them in. Every game that I have played that has had templates opened a can of argument worms for minimal tactical consideration. The inclusion of templates in a game is a sure fire way to keep me away. I don't like the extra time they add nor the extra accessories I have to bring.

I kinda don't care about the vehicle facing rules. Push come to shove, I think Dreadnoughts (this includes big monsters too) and bigger should have a blind spot that makes them easier to kill. I also tend to like rule sets that make turn issue if the game has wheeled/tracked stuff (restricted turns) and walkers (less/unrestricted turns). However, if my opponent has no issue adding 'scenario rules' neither do I. At the same time, any game that have vehicle facing rules rare they saw use in the actual game unless weapon ranges were very short (see Dust Warfare ranged above). More often than not, only certain units ever make use of this weakness and/or it turns the vehicle into more of a weapon emplacement. For 40K, I really only see rear arcs being an issue with transports which should probably have been engineered to have all around armor anyways.

I can also agree that terrain should be a little more involved that it is in 8th. Which given GW's normal penchant for overly complicating things, the don't here. One of my buddy and I's favorite joke playing through Dark Vengeance was the inclusion of using Citadel Brand Terrain or Something to enhance our games. Now, I don't need the frankly dizzying amount of terrain types found in Gates of Antares, but I don't think light/heavy cover, LoS blocking, difficult plus a few others is asking too much. I don't even care if the designers go True Line of Sight or want to use volume cylinders, or whatever.

I can also agree that I don't much care for the meta resource of Command Points. They are just one more thing going on and a bit of an immersion distraction. Although, I will admit, they are one the more 'tough' decision points that are usually few and far between in 40K which is loaded with false choices and other traps.

I also like that vehicles have wounds. I know some older players don't like their tanks to have hit points, but given how wild bouts of luck can be I think it makes for a more enjoyable game.

IV only played from 5th to now

id say 8th is the best edition so far.

7th was bad and it should feel bad.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
It's 50/50 right now with Rogue Trader. But every game I play in 8th tips the scale more and more for 8th. I really do miss some of the insanity from RT.

Back in the day when it was Warhammer fantasy, IN SPACE!!!!

fantasy w guns & tanks

Racerguy180 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
It's 50/50 right now with Rogue Trader. But every game I play in 8th tips the scale more and more for 8th. I really do miss some of the insanity from RT.

Back in the day when it was Warhammer fantasy, IN SPACE!!!!

fantasy w guns & tanks

fantasy also has tanks and guns.