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 aphyon wrote:

Balance is important for casual and narrative play, if you make a pure casual game that is there to play Crusade like campaigns, balance between units within a Codex and between factions is much more important so that everyone can buy/play what they like and have fun (same as all starter boxes must have equal points and be the same strength for such a system)

Except the fact that there was a point in time that GW pointedly said that codex points costs were based on the value of a unit not based on how it compared to another faction, but how important it was within it's own faction.

Whatever GW's excuse of the season is for "were are not able to write good rules and we don't care to improve them as we are already working on the next Edition that will be totally different anyway"

it does not matter if GW say what the reason is, point is that tournaments don't care how bad the originals rules are because a TO can easily force an Errata/FAQ/Update for his event on players who want to participate
a casual/narrative player needs a fixed group to do so and even there can only add minor changes (as otherwise they would not need to buy the rules from GW or would see it as wasted money) the one who can only play pick up games must rely on the default balance of the rules from GW

of course GW tries to tell you that their way of writing rules is the only possible way and that they do it that way for a specific reason that the players demanded
blame the customer for the mistakes of the company so that those that are upset are angry about other customers and not about the company

 Galas wrote:
I would say 8th post SM codex 2.0 but before all supplements was the most balanced state 40k has been in decades.

Post 2.0 but pre supplements? So like...a week?

 the_scotsman wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I would say 8th post SM codex 2.0 but before all supplements was the most balanced state 40k has been in decades.

Post 2.0 but pre supplements? So like...a week?

Well...its even worse than that. This is an example of rose tinted glasses. Everyone sitting here bashing 9th was horrible and imbalanced while holding 8th up as some kind of glory days of balance and fairness.

They've already been listed but there was basically no moment in the game where it was realistically balanced. The game went from 1 broken meta list to the next. Girlyman flying gunline, to girlyman gun line, to Eldar Flying shenanigans into The loyal 32 with Knights and Smashcaptains to spare and right into Space Marine 2 Electric boogaloo and the Iron Hands unkillable lists. . Don't get me wrong, it was incredibly good compared to 7th, but 9th isn't worse than 8th in my opinion.

Since August:
SoB have 17 top 4 placings.
Custards have 5 top 4 placings.
IG have 1 top 4 placings.
Eldar have 1 top 4 placings.
Black Templars have 2 top 4 placings.
Blood Angels have 2 top 4 placings.
Chaos Daemons have 8 top 4 placings. (ironic )
Chaos Marines have 4 top 4 placings.
Ad Mech have 30 top 4 placings.
Dark Angels have 8 top 4 placings.
Death Guard have 8 top 4 placings.
Deathwatch have 3 top 4 placings.
Dark Eldar have 46 top 4 placings.
GSC have 0 top 4 placings.
Grey Knights have 8 top 4 placings.
Harlequins have 7 top 4 placings.
Imperial Fists have 0 top 4 placings.
Imperial Knights have 6 top 4 placings.
Iron Hands have 10 top 4 placings.
Necrons have 4 top 4 placings.
Orkz have 19 top 4 placings.
Raven Guard have 1 top 4 placings.
Renegade Knights have 0 top 4 placings.
Salamanders have 1 top 4 placings.
Space Wolves have 5 top 4 placings.
Tau Have 0 top 4 placings.
Thousand Sons have 7 top 4 placings. (Also Ironic)
Tyranids have 2 top 4 placings.
Ultramarines have 3 top 4 placings.
White Scars have 3 top 4 placings.

You have a fairly balanced tournament results list here with 4 outliers, 2 of them being somewhat extreme and 2 being above average but likely results from having the largest release the factions have ever seen. You also have a couple armies that aren't doing well, IG, Eldar, GSC, Imperial Fists, Renegade Knights, Tau. unsurprising, none of these factions have received their new codex yet, I didn't include nids because they just got their codex and I expect them to start pulling in some big wins.

regardless, that is light years better than 8th. LVO was ready for this? 8 Space Marine lists in the top 13, 2 Eldar, an Ork, a Chaos and an "imperium" army. almost 2/3rds of the top 13 were ALL Marines, with Marines taking 1st, 2nd 4th and 5th.

What about 2019's LVO? Was it any better....Nope. The loyal 32 with Knights took 1st, 3rd, 4th while the Eldar shenanigans took 2nd, 5th and 8th. That was a fairly accurate reflection of the top 20-30 honestly.

Now the only difference is that instead of 1 or 2 factions dominating you have 4 which are doing well and a host of others doing midling to good with just a few in need of some love.

Jarms48 wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
40k community- "7th is the worst edition!"
9th- "Hold my beer!"

We're not quite there yet. It's still saveable right now.

"It's still airborne, it's still good!" ?

The 7th BRB was mostly an improved version of the 6th edition BRB with some of the supplement rule sets rolled into it. The problem with 7th is the runaway power creep that was the codex releases. Rules writers where completely out of touch with the game they influenced while somebody must of been pushing for more power creep to boost sales with zero regard for how it impacted things like balance.

Thing about 7th was that if two people came together to play the game and fielded armies of similar relative power then games could be extremely fun and engaging. It's just that it took a lot of effort to ensure a relatively fair fight. Just throwing two lists on the table to battle each other could very easily result in one sided stomps because of how much of a power difference certain codexes had with others.

For me, 7th was fun despite GW's best efforts to keep breaking the game. 8th and 9th on the other hand is an unfun slog despite my best efforts to find anything enjoyable about it.

^I agree with the above post.

6th edition is regarded as the worst edition ever, not 7th.

6th edition saw the largest exit of players and was so bad, it lasted only 18 months and the lead rules writer was terminated.

7th was a rush to save face, save the game... and it did. So aside from formations, 7th wasn't anywhere close to the dumpster fire of 6th edition.

6th fixed some stuff from 5th, broke others. Like every edition of 40k had (and continues to do so) I don’t have many bad memories of it, compared to other editions, but that might just be the amount of time playing. It might be if 6th lasted longer it would have gotten worse. One big problem was the rollout of new things like flyers, which made for a very have/have not split.

A lot of the problems with 7th were codex based. Overall the rules were OK, but the power creep was crazy. It’s hard to look back objectively without seeing the flaws from things like decurions and other formations. As a whole, those made the game basically unplayable without a fine eye on balancing your list with your opponent. Not that we’ve ever had a time where this wasn’t the case, but the range between broken-good and crap lists was the worst in 7th then in any other time IMHO.

So like, this is full rose-tinted glasses, waiting for my morning coffee to kick in rambling, and I won't make any apologies for it, but here's some word salad.

There's no maths here. No tourney rankings. No crunched numbers or memories of 3rd, or anecdotes about how 9th totally wasn't a bloated corpse at birth, priming us all with a crappy, unpopular edition for 40k The Times of Ending, and then 10th ed. and Age of Emperor.

No.

Just rambling. Disregard because I'm stupid if ya like.

7th had it's problems. Power creep was a very real thing, and I remember waiting with baited breath for rules releases, to see if they could save my precious Black Templars from the shame of d-tier space marines. Formations made the game really spicy, and there was a clear division between haves - tau, certain marines, necrons, eldar - and the have nots, who at a competitive level, could really take pasting after pasting with no hope in sight.
Certain rules interactions meant that you could find yourself hopelessly unable to counter your opponent - things like anti-tank and anti-air, and their absence in your list were the difference between having a fun game, or spending like 3 hours (games were slower back then, no?) just taking an utter pasting. I kinda agree with the poster who said that this was the edition where GW just stopped caring. Looking at the whole thing where the Wraithknight was deliberately undercosted to sell units, and the amount of anguish is caused fans, for so long, is really pretty dirty looking back on it. Likewise, there seemed to be a lot of rules interactions that GW never really anticipated, and having an invisible deathstar just rock up to you was always... less terrifying, but this kind of sad moment where you realized "I'm gonna lose every model in that unit over the next two turns, and there's almost nothing I can do about it".

But 7th was also the edition I started playing. And I remember it fondly.
Remember chapter tactics back then? It was like maybe 2 special rules, tops. Iron hands were considered a reliable powerhouse with their FNP saves. Sure, there were relics, too, but that was about it. To the very lucky subfactions that got rules, it felt like they were an edge, but one that was knowable, compared to the absolute carnage of bookkeeping and supplements and all the other insanity that I really cba to keep abreast of with 9th.
For me, that brevity was really great. It meant that even the filthiest of filthy casuals like me could at least sort of have a working knowledge of the meta, and be able to glance over unit entries, oogle special rules, and get a faint notion of how an army was likely to play. It felt easier to get excited for new rules releases, because they were rarer, and usually less reliably broken. Sometimes you'd get thrown a bone, sometimes you'd have to wait, but even then, you'd maybe only get one or two new additions.
Relics were few and far between, but they were also one of those things that you could use to really push your points economy. Stuff like wondering if Teeth of Terra was worth the points, or whether you should just suck it up, drop a special weapon here or there and go for the Burning Blade instead. Considering about trying to convert options because you took them so often, or just so you could have a cool captain or whatever equipped with one, just in case you wanted to take it in a battle.
Stuff like armor facings and templates made movement feel more strategic. In 7th I was always under-gunned when it came to taking out armored targets, and trying to sneak your boys round to get that rear shot really was tricky. Likewise, the struggle of placing a template weapon well, and then the satisfaction when you could park it on a unit, bunched up, say, in cover? One of the peakest *chef's kiss* moments. They were rare, and usually with flamers (for me), and so... never really delivered, because it was 7th, and plasma was just a better take, but still, it was a fun moment, where it felt like squad maneuvering really mattered. Deepstriking, too, was horribly risky, and could mean the difference between a squad being delivered down the throat of your enemy, or else losing 2/5ths of it's strength before arrival, ON TOP of just landing out in the open, in full view of that Battle Cannon. But that risk, that danger of total failure made the decision carry real weight, made it feel risky, made the choice of putting your unit in a tank and rumbling up the board, taking fire, or trying something risky and cheap, but possibly extremely dangerous, was a real decision to chew over, and really changed how your playstyle would have to work. These days (forgive me, I haven't played any 9th) it sounds a lot more like you try to make the cover rules work to max out lethality to your foe, minimize it to yourself, and just pop cardgame strategies to delete units. Armor almost isn't worth it, unless your dudes are very squishy, and even then everything is just maximizing how many dice can be thrown in response to a situation.
Despite all the inbalance that 7th got weighed down with, at the filthy casual level that I used to play, it always seemed like, even with the most hopeless battles, you had a chance. Something insane like 90% casualties in your enemy's first round of shooting - even in my worst games, and I had some very bad worst games never happened. There often was a point where you knew the game was unwinnable, but even then you would have enough backbone for a turn or two to do some damage, maybe try and get some revenge, or deny something to your foe that would make the game harder for them.
Early 8th was a much easier game to pick up and learn, but it stripped away some of the things that I think actually made 7th (and, probably more accurately, the pre-7th ruleset paradigm) a really solid system. Because for all the things that suggested that GW didn't care any more, for all the balance issues that could've been quickly ammended, beneath the bloat and USR hell, there was actually a pretty good game, buried away, that was fun, strategic, and tactically engaging. I'm not sure if 7th ever could have wholly been that game, but I don't think it was all that bad, either. Early 8th showed us that GW can actually achieve, if not balance, then semi-decent parity with faction rules. It also showed us that they are more than capable of fat-trimming, and stripping bloat. However, they haven't showed that since, and they have yet to return to the level of movement-based strategy that preceding rules systems enjoyed either. But I can also see how, for tired veterans, 7th could have seemed like a real nail in the unfun coffin, especially if you already had a decent-sized miniatures collection, and were able to play those higher-point-level games, where the real wombo combo bs could pop off.

tldr: 7th was kinda fun for me, but I get how it could be a silly unfun mess, too.

 Nevelon wrote:
A lot of the problems with 7th were codex based. Overall the rules were OK, but the power creep was crazy. It’s hard to look back objectively without seeing the flaws from things like decurions and other formations. As a whole, those made the game basically unplayable without a fine eye on balancing your list with your opponent. Not that we’ve ever had a time where this wasn’t the case, but the range between broken-good and crap lists was the worst in 7th then in any other time IMHO.

Agree with the Codex issues.

Downstream of that: 7th edition was a turn off, some players perceived it as a money grab. Asking people to buy a new set of books for a ruleset that was mostly 6th with some tweaks was not enjoyable.

It came out about 2 years after 6th was released. It was too soon.

Jarms48 wrote:
We're not quite there yet. It's still saveable right now.

Damn, I called it.

GW literally just hit 40k with a shot of adrenaline. Killed all 3 of the most toxic armies with 3 A4 pages.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
A lot of the problems with 7th were codex based. Overall the rules were OK, but the power creep was crazy. It’s hard to look back objectively without seeing the flaws from things like decurions and other formations. As a whole, those made the game basically unplayable without a fine eye on balancing your list with your opponent. Not that we’ve ever had a time where this wasn’t the case, but the range between broken-good and crap lists was the worst in 7th then in any other time IMHO.

Agree with the Codex issues.

Downstream of that: 7th edition was a turn off, some players perceived it as a money grab. Asking people to buy a new set of books for a ruleset that was mostly 6th with some tweaks was not enjoyable.

It came out about 2 years after 6th was released. It was too soon.

It burned a lot of my goodwill. While I don’t mind spending money on minis, I am less fond of spending it on rules. Prior to 6th, you at least knew your investment was going to last 4-5+ years. The life cycle of 6th killed that hard. And 7th felt like a major pay-to-win system. Like the sales team was not only firmly in control, but was doing unseemly things behind the scenes to the rules guys. The story about the wraithknight being a big one, but also formations where you only got the super special datasheet from buying direct from GW. And not just "captain with a different pistol" level PTW stuff. But skyhammer formations where you got to ignore all the bad rules, and have layer after layer after layer of broken crap on top.

A lot of the ideas in 6-7th were sound in concept, but flawed in execution. Allies. Back for the first time since 2nd. Thematically appropriate to have the guard holding the line while a spearhead of marines drops from orbit into the enemies’ heart. Less so to use them to layer Eldar buffs on Tau. Or formations that reward you for taking sub-par units in fluffy ways with a small bonus. Not give hundreds of points of free wargear or army wide stat buffs. They also killed the ballanced TAC nature of the FOC.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
A lot of the problems with 7th were codex based. Overall the rules were OK, but the power creep was crazy. It’s hard to look back objectively without seeing the flaws from things like decurions and other formations. As a whole, those made the game basically unplayable without a fine eye on balancing your list with your opponent. Not that we’ve ever had a time where this wasn’t the case, but the range between broken-good and crap lists was the worst in 7th then in any other time IMHO.

Agree with the Codex issues.

Downstream of that: 7th edition was a turn off, some players perceived it as a money grab. Asking people to buy a new set of books for a ruleset that was mostly 6th with some tweaks was not enjoyable.

It came out about 2 years after 6th was released. It was too soon.

It came out bc 6th was that bad. The game was literally unplayable for some armies and many "normal" lists. Marines vs most "better" lists could be tabled by turn 2, some armies relied on super combos, or a single DS of 4 characters and a unit to even be playable. While other armies like Chaos and necrons just needed a couple flyers and the rest could be anything you wanted. When a single flyer can shoot a flamer at 12" with pivot points hitting multiple units at str 7, hitting dudes inside transports, terrain, and ignore cover that auto killed anything single wound basically all while you can only hit it back on 6's. yeah its stupid. Then HP's were terrible, way to easy to kill anything while jink was almost not even a save (5+, but when any 3 hits kills you a 5+ save is not very good). I had games with DE where 1 Ork truck with Burna Boys literally killed 30 bodies and 3 vehicles, yes, 1 unit with did that, my models worth triple of his. Then you old D-weapon and new Knights... lol that was bad really fast. There were many little rules too that was just bad, worded poorly, or just way too much, too weak, too annoying, etc.... (lie units in transports counted on the table for rules but not for models, but bc they wanted units to be able to be hit by some weapons like grenades and flamers if there were Fire points or Open top, but then guns that had Nova was in the grey, but you also had beams, etc... just way too many little stupid rules interactions).

Players couldn't wait for 7th within just a year of playing 6th.

Yep it was 14 months (not 18) of hell. It got me to start playing games other than just 40K and classic battletech.

In a way 6th edition being so terrible was a good thing since it got me into playing infinity, warmachine and DUST.

7th was an improvement but wasn't truly fixed until Alan Bligh got ahold of it for horus heresy.


At the end of the day GW can do whatever they like with the game, they cannot however force me to play it in it's current edition or chase the meta. i have all my old minis, all the rulebooks and codexes and i enjoy the heck out of playing it the way it was originally meant to be, that means my group uses core 5th ed rules and much like mezmorki's pro-hammer project we use whichever codex best fits the feel of the faction. 9th does not give me that, but in my book it is only slightly less bad than 6th. who knows when 10th comes out GW may surprise(or not) us by doing an even worse job.

 Vankraken wrote:
The 7th BRB was mostly an improved version of the 6th edition BRB with some of the supplement rule sets rolled into it. The problem with 7th is the runaway power creep that was the codex releases. Rules writers where completely out of touch with the game they influenced while somebody must of been pushing for more power creep to boost sales with zero regard for how it impacted things like balance.

Thing about 7th was that if two people came together to play the game and fielded armies of similar relative power then games could be extremely fun and engaging. It's just that it took a lot of effort to ensure a relatively fair fight. Just throwing two lists on the table to battle each other could very easily result in one sided stomps because of how much of a power difference certain codexes had with others.

For me, 7th was fun despite GW's best efforts to keep breaking the game. 8th and 9th on the other hand is an unfun slog despite my best efforts to find anything enjoyable about it.

I agree abuout 7th, with pre-game arrangements it was fun. I certainly had fun in that edition but I mostly stayed away from random pick up games.

In 9th I find that much less pre-game arrangements are needed on average to get a fun game, random pick up games work better, and I prefer several core mechanics of 9th edition. That's why I love the current edition.

Pre-Formation 7th was the best they've ever put out. The formations weren't necessarily a bad idea as the idea stuck and we are getting them in 9th with the Charadon/Octarius books. It was also the last time we had a competitive mission set for tournament play, which was sadly ignored by tournaments. A side effect of what made 7th appear bad was everything that Ward did with Ultras/GK's seemed to mutate into a monster during 7th. As bad as it was, it's nothing in comparison to the guy doing the damage in 9th.

8th was simply 40k being locked in the Cage in the Temple of Doom while Mola Ram ripped the beating heart out of it before dropping it into the fire.

9th is the worst rule set to date. The 'Matched Play' mission is borderline unplayable after learning how to play. Yet it keeps getting crammed down our throats with every CA. They're trying to make it succeed, but each update just cuts players out. Crusade format is the only gem right now, and it's just a diamond in the rough. Something that we might see a bit more polished if it survives to the next edition.

6th was worse, but Formations were absurd and should never have been created.

Tycho wrote:

Like others have said, there's more to it than JUST 40k sales on the GW side, but yeah, the edition was actually that bad. A lot of the non-GW gaming stores in my area were able to stay afloat based solely on 40k sales up to that point. Even in "down times" when the game was less popular. But sales dipped so bad in 7th that no less than 5 stores closed due to lagging 40k sales. It was also (arguably) the worst edition for needing multiple sources to play your army. White Dwarf was basically a nice looking pamphlet that came out literally weekly and often had rules.

40k was non-existent in my area for a while form the middle of 7th to a little after the launch of 8th and that's after it had been wildly easy for years to find a game. It just ... died.

Same experience here. We had a group of about 20 guys that would regularly play at either the GW store or the FLGS right down the street. All of us would get a game in at least weekly, sometimes 2-3 days a week. 7th killed it. Most people stopped coming in, several sold off their armies. I sold all my models and built a gaming PC/mining rig with the money. My friend sold most of his stuff and got heavy into high end RC cars. I'm just now coming back to 40k after only playing Titanicus for the last 3 years. 40k and WHFB were #1 and #2 selling game systems for years. It's pretty bad when 40k loses the top spot and Fantasy drops completely off the list. That shows you how badly they missed the mark on both systems during the end of the Kirby era.

My take on this,

I'd actually lump 6th in with 7th as effectively the same edition, and both had significant issues.

As other have mentioned, Formations were a big part of it, particularly being directly tied to web sales bundles. In general, they tried to do too many things in too many directions, and made really poor design decisions. Trying to make Challenges between individual infantry soldiers on the table a thing, on tables that may otherwise be battles between tank companies or involve superheavy tanks, was just inappropriate to the scale of the game. The entire concept of the HP mechanic for vehicles effectively turned them all into Toughness/Wound models...without saves, while still having the overlapping damage table kill mechanic. As a result, tanks and walkers became absolute garbage, unless they had the Jink skill like Skimmers and Flyers. Faction balance was particularly atrocious and lethality got turned up to 11. The entire 6-7E time period was a giant mess and probably the steepest drop-off in play and interest I'd seen that wasn't a result of game stores being physically closed.

I don't think the rules themselves were any better or worse than any other edition its just GW seemed not to care at all for any type of unit or force balance. Whatever they were trying to sell at the moment was made OP until next month when the next thing came out that was more powerful than that.