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Came into the game for 3rd, really started playing in 5th though, and playing Space Wolves at that. So perhaps I'm biased in saying that 5th ed was a lot of fun, felt like the best balance between the core game mechanics at the time before 6th and 7th really created some wildly unfun imbalances.

That said... I honestly think that 9th might go down as the best that the game has been. Yes, it's bloated and there's too much to actually remember, but they've done a great job of dealing with balance issues in a reasonable manner, especially compared to how the game has been historically, and the amount of army personalization is pretty much unseen since 2nd or 3rd ed.

As with most things, it was the execution that failed the past and present AP systems, not the systems themselves.

For the all or nothing style of 3rd-7th, there majority of armies people played were Sv3+, which meant most people took AP3 (or, really, AP2, because Plasma was the most common) weapons to deal with them. It meant that no other armour type was worth a damn, and APs 4 and 5 were so prevalent that those armour saves weren't worth anything. It only got worse with the introduction of AP values on melee weapons, as now only certain melee weapons were worth bothering with in a world where most people were Sv3+.

For 2nd Edition, and later 9th Edition, the modifier system was fine, but the sheer amounts of modifiers was what killed them. In 2nd Ed even Lasguns had a -1 Save Mod, and most things bigger certainly did, so a Marine never actually got to take a 3+ save unless they were fighting Gretchin! In 9th we know that there were too many save mods, and that's why 10th has such a big reduction on that front.

Concept vs execution is GW's constant eternal Achillies heel, and AP systems are a massive victim of that.

The binary ap has an inherent disadvantage in implementation. Being binary limits what you can do.

You could strip all ap from weapons and only have it on special/heavy weapons, and it would have very little impact. Anything with ap3 or 2 would be preferred due to the army skew.

Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. I liked the binary method as armour saves meant something. I have often retold the story at my utter shock during the first game of 3rd I ever saw and how Marines not only got to take an armour save, but got to take it at 3+, something just unheard of in 2nd Ed.

But, as stated, it is binary, which brings with it a whole host of problems and issues with granularity.

Those more knowledgeable than me might be able to answer this: Is it true in HH that AP3 wouldn't ignore Sv3+, just reduce it by -1?

If the above is true, that could be an interesting middle ground. It does make Sv2+ supremely effective though.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. I liked the binary method as armour saves meant something. I have often retold the story at my utter shock during the first game of 3rd I ever saw and how Marines not only got to take an armour save, but got to take it at 3+, something just unheard of in 2nd Ed.

But, as stated, it is binary, which brings with it a whole host of problems and issues with granularity.

Those more knowledgeable than me might be able to answer this: Is it true in HH that AP3 wouldn't ignore Sv3+, just reduce it by -1?

If the above is true, that could be an interesting middle ground. It does make Sv2+ supremely effective though.

It is not true.

What I think would be good is a combo system.
Probably with the binary AP system, and a special rule "High Impact X", where you reduce armor save rolls by X.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 aphyon wrote:
I do not understand this idea that CC was hard to get to or pull off in 5th ed. or the problems dealing with massed armored vehicles, as somebody who still plays it every weekend with a large pool of players with various armies. not only is it not game breaking. getting into close combat happens all the time. especially if you bring units in your force that-deepstrike, get summoned, infiltrate, outflank, or just use assault vehicles. in fact one of the banes of our guard armored company player is dealing with assault units.

"The system not rewarding clever maneuvering doesn't matter because some melee units teleport"

okay.

.....er no if anything there is more "clever maneuvering" especially since we still use the 4th ed vehicle assault rules in our 5th ed games. the direction you assault from and how fast the vehicle moved the previous turn matters. as does the placement of gunline infantry units when things sneak up on you.

2nd edition, because I like my orks to be characterful and fun, big things to still be able to use cover, bright colours to be at the forefront of painting and not having everything revolve around The Imperium vs Chaos.

 Hellebore wrote:
No the problem is that it only has two states, on or off. The front loading of ap2/3 is just marines feeling what every non marine army felt against any other AP value.

No, the front loading of AP2/3 broke the fundamental principle behind the system. It was supposed to be 'right tool vs right target' - but cheap mass AP2/3 (including early rending) was the right tool against every target.

Armour 5 - served to reduce the base lethality of close combat and differentiate the cheapest horde/chaff units when they faced off
Armour 4 - halved the efficiency of small arms. Usually miscosted.
Armour 3 - protection from light anti-tank/heavy anti-infantry (typically all templates and most multi-shot high strength weapons)
Armour 2 - protection from artillery

In an ideal world each step down the chain would make the correct AP weapon more cost effective than mass application of a lower AP weapon, while the cost of heavier weapons would make them inefficient against lighter targets.

IMO they never quite got the armour 4 balance right (usually too expensive, far too many 'light' blast weapons were AP4, and of course the 4+ cover in 5e rendering it pointless) and were all over the place with weapon pricing. But it was a fast system if nothing else, each individual dice roll was worth more.

As someone who doesn't play a Sv 3+ army in the Heresy (Solar Auxilia are Sv 4+) I think people are overlooking a lot about the binary system of armor pen in the game that actually iteratively improved on the concept.

Things like Rending or Breaching affect the AP on the weapon side, and can mean some wounds ignore armor while some don't (so a HH plasma gun gives a Marine a save on about 40% of its wounds, but doesn't give a Solar Auxiliary a save ever). Other weapon keywords like Brutal can do multiple wounds (and force multiple saves, but only on a single model).

Then you have things like the Heavy unit type, that lets you re-roll armor saves against blasts (Solar Auxilia void armor functions this way).

Then you have Damage Mitigation saves - feel no pain style saves that are no longer limited to just Feel No Pain (e.g. Shrouded, which is most commonly gained through a Reaction).

This means that by clever use of reactions, cover, and armor, you can actually use the save system whether you have a 3+ or not.

THAT SAID, it still has the same "Marine Problem" as 40k, where weapons that aren't AP 3 or better are not taken just because they are judged to be worthless. That, ironically, helps to protect my Solar Auxilia because they are often fighting weapons that are inefficient at harming them.

5th edition was the best set of core rules (and also the last time GW actually tried to improve the game rather than just adding stuff to buy or making changes to justify a new edition).

Where it always goes off the rails is with the Codexes and the mid-edition design shift: and 5th went off the rails like it was a train full of chemicals in a East Palestine.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
5th edition was the best set of core rules (and also the last time GW actually tried to improve the game rather than just adding stuff to buy or making changes to justify a new edition).

Where it always goes off the rails is with the Codexes and the mid-edition design shift: and 5th went off the rails like it was a train full of chemicals in a East Palestine.

I largely agree, though some "improvements" read less like a seriously considered iterative improvement on 4th and more like a "throw everything out and start with my preconceived notion of how things should go".

- I prefer 4th's Terrain Rules, which had some very clear flaws that could've been iteratively improved upon but instead they were just outright thrown out in favor of the most extreme TLOS I have ever seen and the whole "7 of my conscripts are conga-lined in cover on the left, 15 are conga'd in the open in the middle, and 8 of them are conga'd in cover on the right in a wholly separate terrain piece. Yay a 4+ save" problem.

- I preferred 4th's vehicle damage charts. The rules for what happened to transported passengers when the transports went up needed improvement (no-save "entangled" was harsh!). But we didn't need to make things like they were in 15th where a Rhino could fearlessly tank 15 Vanquisher shells on the face. The damage chart was more responsible for vehicle survivability in 5th than its armor was (which is why Light Vehicle Spam became the hallmark of the edition). It's worse because this effect led directly to Hull Points, and then to the current paradigm we have now in a tracible through-line.

- I preferred 4th's movement and shooting rules. The lack of run without Fleet meant that units had to maneuver very deliberately and battles were a cross between plans that had to begin executing early, and reactions that inhibited plans. The game was slower, both from a maneuver and a lethality perspective, which increased the relative value of "teleport"-style maneuver such as Deep Strike, justifying the "mishap" risk inherent in the latter.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
...and the whole "7 of my conscripts are conga-lined in cover on the left, 15 are conga'd in the open in the middle, and 8 of them are conga'd in cover on the right in a wholly separate terrain piece. Yay a 4+ save" problem.

IIRC that worked in 4e as well - more models behind cover than out = all models get saves.

The run move... mixed feelings. 3 turns to cross the half way point, 4-5 turn while moving through cover. As much as I dislike how fast the game has become I got the appeal of the uncertain mid-game run of scoring reinforcements between objectives or the chance of the unit who got entangled in their flanking transports wreckage turn 1 to actually make it back into the game at some point.

4e transports were flaming coffins of death, 5e transports were bunkers on wheels. 6e did not find the happy medium between the two.

 Tyran wrote:
9th, if only because I consider the 9th Ed Tyranid codex the best Tyranid codex.

Expanding on this, 8th and 9th and 10th are inherently better rulesets when it comes to MCs.
The existence of Damage and expanded wound table means you can have much larger stats. T8 W12 would be a ridiculous thing in classic 40k but it isn't in 8th-9th and actually kinda weak in 10th.

Also no stupid limitation on number of guns fired, which is appreciated for monsters that can carry 3-4 guns.

A.T. wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
...and the whole "7 of my conscripts are conga-lined in cover on the left, 15 are conga'd in the open in the middle, and 8 of them are conga'd in cover on the right in a wholly separate terrain piece. Yay a 4+ save" problem.

IIRC that worked in 4e as well - more models behind cover than out = all models get saves.

Yes, but the models behind cover were more often than not outright out of line of sight, due to the LoS rules. So they actually don't count towards having the "majority of the unit" in cover. Doing the conga trick is much harder in this case, on a reasonable board. (Only models partially visible to the firer granted cover in 4th).

The run move... mixed feelings. 3 turns to cross the half way point, 4-5 turn while moving through cover. As much as I dislike how fast the game has become I got the appeal of the uncertain mid-game run of scoring reinforcements between objectives or the chance of the unit who got entangled in their flanking transports wreckage turn 1 to actually make it back into the game at some point.

I think entanglement wasn't great, but running in general just lead to weird results. In 4th, if you want to reinforce folks on an objective, you either had to plan ahead or desperately charge the enemy (or, shockingly, have the maneuverability a transport provides. Benefits and drawbacks I suppose). In 5th, units could sprint right up to an enemy unit and come to a screeching halt 1" away, and be 100% safe about it. In 4th, this could happen only across a very short distance (in the movement phase only) and was much rarer.

4e transports were flaming coffins of death, 5e transports were bunkers on wheels. 6e did not find the happy medium between the two.

Flaming coffins of death is what most transports turn into within a hundred yards of an equipped enemy's positions - in order to approach that closely mounted IRL, most transports would have to use obscurants, cover, and supporting fire from other assets.

There's no reason "flaming coffins of death" is a bad thing, necessarily, so long as there are other benefits to bringing them and they are costed correctly.

My only issue was with Entanglement, because being auto-pinned really stung and was one drawback too far imo.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. I liked the binary method as armour saves meant something. I have often retold the story at my utter shock during the first game of 3rd I ever saw and how Marines not only got to take an armour save, but got to take it at 3+, something just unheard of in 2nd Ed.

But, as stated, it is binary, which brings with it a whole host of problems and issues with granularity.

Those more knowledgeable than me might be able to answer this: Is it true in HH that AP3 wouldn't ignore Sv3+, just reduce it by -1?

If the above is true, that could be an interesting middle ground. It does make Sv2+ supremely effective though.

The 3rd-7th AP system was for me just too extreme.

For instance, unless you were 3.5 CSM with Tank Hunters? Auto cannons were just crap. Barely tickled Marines. Not enough Strength to overly concern most tanks. Too low a rate of fire to worry big blob units.

I much prefer my traditional 2nd Ed armour modifiers. Not necessarily a given iteration of them like. But it’s a more flexible rules concept than All Or Nothing.

Likewise I much prefer Cover being a to-hit modifier than an extra armour save.

Which does rather question why I like HH so much. But then I never said I’m not a hypocrite when it suits me

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
My only issue was with Entanglement, because being auto-pinned really stung and was one drawback too far imo.

The forced disembarking to any penetration (complete with 50% casualties and a pinning test) also somewhat discouraged the use of transports - along with the automatic death of the entire squad (no saves) should it stray within encircling distance of a fast unit or take an unlucky ordnance hit. Emperor help you if you didn't disembark everything you had at first sight of a siren prince or similar.
Encircling was easier in 5th of course but far less lethal.

The removal of entanglement led to an amusing loophole in later editions - the Dark Eldar 'assault ram' tactic, deliberately annihilating their own transport with a long range move as they were only prohibited from assaulting out of their vehicle that turn, not out of a crater...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For instance, unless you were 3.5 CSM with Tank Hunters? Auto cannons were just crap. Barely tickled Marines. Not enough Strength to overly concern most tanks. Too low a rate of fire to worry big blob units.

Popularity ebbed and flowed. They were excellent weapons for stripping hull points from transports for example - dirt cheap and multiple shot.
Even in earlier editions they were startistically more likely to penetrate AV11 than a missile launcher. Now you'd almost always want the launcher for other reasons but I quite favoured them on chimeras - and being able to arbitrarily assign the most situationally beneficial veteran upgrade to any given squad wasn't something all factions had in their pockets :p

 Tyran wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
9th, if only because I consider the 9th Ed Tyranid codex the best Tyranid codex.

Expanding on this, 8th and 9th and 10th are inherently better rulesets when it comes to MCs.
The existence of Damage and expanded wound table means you can have much larger stats. T8 W12 would be a ridiculous thing in classic 40k but it isn't in 8th-9th and actually kinda weak in 10th.

Also no stupid limitation on number of guns fired, which is appreciated for monsters that can carry 3-4 guns.

I don’t like that gigantic monstrous creatures often only have something weak like AP -2 on their attacks. The old ones ignored armour saves and they were much more efficient at cracking open vehicles with the 2D6 penetration. A Carnifex does a pitiful amount of wounds to a Land Raider in combat now. 4 crushing claw attacks do about 3 damage (lol). In older editions it had a really good chance of destroying it in one attack.

I think my opinion is somewhat skewed but here goes:

3rd - This is the edition I started with. However, I only played a few games before the changeover, so I don't remember the differences between 3rd and 4th.

4th - Most of my memories of this edition involve using Necrons, whilst my friend used CSM. Every battle would end the exact same way - a nigh-invulnerable deamon prince massacring my units because most of my firepower was bolters and the rest just bounced off, WBB didn't work in melee, and Necrons - even the Lords - weren't worth a crap in melee. Oh and the daemon prince could kill one unit and then consolidate into another to avoid all shooting.

Had I been using a different army, I might have felt differently.

5th - For all of its issues, this is probably the edition I had the most fun playing. I liked all the books for the various factions I played and it was one of the last editions where they still had a decent number of options and actual wargear.

Hell, my Dark Eldar had more units in 5th than they have ever had since.

6th - The worst edition I've played (though 10th is intent on taking that title).

7th - Weirdly, this might be my 2nd favourite edition after 5th. Not because of the core rules, which were utterly atrocious, but because it contained my beloved Corsairs, doomed to never again exist as any sort of standalone army.

8th - A really mixed bag. I liked some of the changes (e.g. characters not needing to attach to units, AP being a modifier, Warlord Traits no longer being random, the psychic phase not aping 8th edition WHFB), but hated others (stratagems, the loss of initiative, changes to cover saves, auras etc). The armies were a mixed bag, to say the least.

9th - The core rules were a glorified errata and many of the changes made seemed unnecessary. The same went for the codices. In fact, pretty much every aspect of 9th was one step forward, two steps back. I'm not sure there was a single thing it managed to improve without ruining something else.

In terms of fun, I'd actually rate it lower than 8th. Taking into account the codices, I think it made more changes for the worse than for the better.

10th - Hahahahahahahaha.

Going only with what I have experienced, I voted for the 5th. I am interested in the 4th, but I have not actually rolled dice yet on for that edition.

nemesis464 wrote:

I don’t like that gigantic monstrous creatures often only have something weak like AP -2 on their attacks. The old ones ignored armour saves and they were much more efficient at cracking open vehicles with the 2D6 penetration. A Carnifex does a pitiful amount of wounds to a Land Raider in combat now. 4 crushing claw attacks do about 3 damage (lol). In older editions it had a really good chance of destroying it in one attack.

It had the downside of making cheap MCs simply way more efficient. Necron Spiders and Riptides were absurdly good at melee and there was almost no point in giving claws to a Carnifex when even a dakkafex had a good chance of wrecking a tank in melee.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For instance, unless you were 3.5 CSM with Tank Hunters? Auto cannons were just crap. Barely tickled Marines. Not enough Strength to overly concern most tanks. Too low a rate of fire to worry big blob units.

I completely disagree. I played Guard more than I played Chaos, and Autocannons were my bread and butter.

My guys hit 50% of the time, and you mean I can get a gun that mitigates that by firing twice a turn out to really long range and can hurt everything that isn't AV14? And then once they hit 24" I can throw in a further S7 shot? If you were firing them at Marines you weren't using them correctly.

Battlecannons were for Marines. Artillery were for Marines. Autocannons were for stopping transports, and they were fantastic at it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
As with most things, it was the execution that failed the past and present AP systems, not the systems themselves.

For the all or nothing style of 3rd-7th, there majority of armies people played were Sv3+, which meant most people took AP3 (or, really, AP2, because Plasma was the most common) weapons to deal with them. It meant that no other armour type was worth a damn, and APs 4 and 5 were so prevalent that those armour saves weren't worth anything. It only got worse with the introduction of AP values on melee weapons, as now only certain melee weapons were worth bothering with in a world where most people were Sv3+.

For 2nd Edition, and later 9th Edition, the modifier system was fine, but the sheer amounts of modifiers was what killed them. In 2nd Ed even Lasguns had a -1 Save Mod, and most things bigger certainly did, so a Marine never actually got to take a 3+ save unless they were fighting Gretchin! In 9th we know that there were too many save mods, and that's why 10th has such a big reduction on that front.

Concept vs execution is GW's constant eternal Achillies heel, and AP systems are a massive victim of that.

Plasma weapons with AP2 killed Terminators during 3rd-7th. One of my buddies playing Dark Angels at the time called his Deathwing dudes "White Elephants" to illustrate how easily they would fold under fire. He never played 2nd and listened to my war stories with big eyes when Terminators would shrug off plasma pistol and plasma gun fire like it was nothing with a 3+ save on 2D6. Only heavy weapons with large ASM scores were a credible threat.

What people often forget when addressing poor SM power armour saves during 2nd is that only SM & CSM had the "Rapid Fire" rule meaning doubling the shots of bolters when being STATIONARY. Also to-hit penalties were a thing. So being in cover and having only to weather a couple of shots meant that SM didn´t just die like flies. For this to achieve you had to break the game and bring the most cheesiest combos or have the misfortune of being shot by a dreadnought which had a very high BS score. Playing also the game in a relaxed atmosphere like in those nostalgia battle reports which popped up in the last two years on youtube demonstrates that not everything was doom and gloom.

I'd have to say 4th. I started learning 2nd when 3rd dropped, and overall I appreciated the changes. A lot of a person's enjoyment depends on how much abstraction is suitable to their tastes.

While 5th was decent for the most part, it introduced too many lateral changes for my liking. It was then I understood this was GW's business model. I really hated the convoluted and generally stupid wound allocation system, though several others after that were equally as stupid. Their so-called 'true line of sight' was another bad implementation.

Since then we've played our own hybridized version of 40K, borrowing elements we liked from subsequent editions and adding plenty of our own rules. It certainly is interesting to see the roller coaster of rules sets GW produces.

On a side note, several have discussed the old AP vs armor save dilemma. Some have said it's too 'binary', and too much all-or-nothing. I can understand that perspective - you want at least partial credit for your armor, right? I think it works. Yeah, it's a shock to not get any save when your marine gets punked by a krak missile (though we did give marines a 6++ invulnerable). But you are rolling for saves anyway. So the result isn't as binary as perceived. Having saves denied completely makes sense if a weapon is simply too powerful. But the attacker is already rolling to wound - isn't that silly if you hit a grot in the open with a battle cannon and roll a 1? All these rolls are intertwined abstractly to reach a reasonable result. Specific outliers can muddle one's perspective.

As far as realism goes, weapon penetration against armor IS pretty binary, especially for ballistic weapons. In melee, armor matters quite a bit more but frankly we had little interest in introducing the kludge of AP values for all melee weapons in this scale of a game.

The idea of adding +1 to a save roll on the exact AP vs armor save seems reasonable, but is it? This is heavily slanted toward the original armor, and really makes a 2+ save too good. If you really wanted to find a happy median between getting a save or not when the armor value is equal to the AP, just allow half the number of saves to made and rest automatically fail. No need to invent more mechanics.

On the AP thing, I didn't mind the all-or-nothing AP of older editions.

- Units like Guardsmen and Kabalites didn't get saves against even basic weapons, but this encouraged them to stick to cover when not in transports. It also made bolters feel a little more impactful.

- AP2/3 was the gold standard but (at least early on) it was generally rare enough that most armies had difficulty spamming it (save perhaps for on melee troops, but then that also gave melee more of a defined role).

- Moreover, the fact that units had relatively few wounds and cover saves didn't improve armour meant that you could very often make up for a lack of AP with volume of fire. Apart from anything else, this meant that basic infantry weapons would usually do something, even if they weren't as good as plasma or the like.

- It also helped to speed up the game, because units weren't forever rolling 5+ or 6+ saves even against high-AP weapons.


I don't claim that all-or-nothing AP was perfect. However, IMO it was only in and after 6th edition that we started to see real issues with it. Primarily:

- Drastic increase in AP. A lot of the newer units (particularly fliers, should-be-vehicles like the Dreadknight and Riptide, super-heavies etc., but also smaller units with e.g. Grav weapons) had substantially more AP than had been available previously. Not just in terms of raw numbers but also the availability on things like torrent flamers and/or large blast templates (giving them the ability to delete whole units of MEQ with a single shot). This skewed things way to far, as did the escalation of toughness/saves (which meant you needed over 100 guardsmen in rapid-fire range to take down a single Necron Wraith).

- Extreme imbalance in AP distribution. As above, many armies/units saw huge increases in the amount of high-AP weapons available. At the same time, other factions were left scrabbling in the trash pile looking for some. Especially when power weapons no longer ignored armour saves, so an awful lot of weapons that should have been good against armour could no longer scratch 2+ saves. IIRC DE didn't have a single AP2 melee weapon available for their generic characters (and prior to his deletion, not even Vect himself was allowed an AP2 melee weapon!). Monstrous creatures notwithstanding, I seem to recall Tyranids being in a similar position.

In short, some factions were very heavily favoured over others when it came to AP, and a lot of new units/weapons really skewed the balance of AP in the 'have' armies way too much towards the AP2-3 range.

I've often felt that the all-or-nothing AP system would have worked better in a game with a more even distribution of save values. In a game where some 50-75% of armies in any given shop are 3+ or better across the board, it establishes clear breakpoints and causes optimization headaches for armies on the receiving end of hard-counters (read: taking MEQs against a plasma-out-the-wazoo leafblower list was no fun).

Or somehow work in a more graceful degradation. It never sat right with me that an autocannon at AP4 pinged off a Marine's armor just as often as a lasgun at AP-, and it caused some annoying side effects- why's an autocannon so much better at killing Rhinos than it is at killing the Marines in them?

Anyways. I think my favorite era over the years was probably early 5th Ed, using 4th Ed codices. Solid edition for the most part, but the later codices made it silly.

7th is my preferred mostly due to having the most experience with it. I still find 7th fun to play over the newer editions (haven't played 10th yet). Regardless, 7th has A LOT of issues with how GW went insane with power creep and nonsensical game balance. That said the 3-7th core rules system is something I greatly value over the paper thin mess that was 8th and 9ths core ruleset. During 7th, I focused on having relatively balanced matchups which resulted in bypassing a lot of the frustrating aspects of the edition instead of fielding my army list completely blind to what my opponent was using.

While the codexes were generally trash due to bad balance decisions, there were a lot of good ideas in there with formations as they actually added a lot of gameplay mechanics and styles of play. A lot of the fun mechanics of the formations got lost in the scramble to power creep with net lists running out of control while 80% of formations never saw much gameplay usage. The abundance of options had a great mix of fluff and crunch for making thematic army lists with gameplay mechanics to support the themes.

IMO 7th could be best summed up as having good ideas executed in some of the worst ways possible and with an inherent lack of understanding of what makes for game balance. Despite all of that, it's still superior to 8th and 9th for me due to the fundamental core gameplay of the newer editions being devoid of fun gameplay while 7th could be fun if you get a balanced matchup of army lists.

Frankly I feel a lot of the discussion about 7th gets tied up in how bad the edition turned out due in large part to the horrible codex balance. Because of that, it becomes a situation where everything 7th is automatically bad instead of digging deeper to identify what parts of 7th's core where the issue and what stuff could of worked if the codex balance wasn't so horrid.

Somehow, these threads reappear every now and then, and somehow, I always read them because I love reading people's memories anecdotes and rants. Truly feels like an insight into the history of the game if you ask me.

As far as I am concerned I dunno, I started in 6th, even though it isn't really anymore. We did houserule it beyond all recongnition by pouring in rules, profiles and equipments from 3rd to 7th, plus rules we made ourselves. Is fun though.

But we never jumped onto another edition though we considered it a few times. Didn't want to go with 7th cause formations were horrid. Tried my hand at 8th with the free primer and datasheets in the boxes but finally couldn't spent more on new rulebooks so postponed and forgotten. My brother has experience with 9th but he was disappointed with strategems. And fianlly I don't know enough about ten to know whether buying the books is worth.

There's also lore issues, I don't like newer lore as of Gathering storm so I moslty pretend it never happened and have little interest in following up events.

Might convince buddies to give 4th a go though, because reading about it truly looks fun and I already have got most of the era's books for collection purposes.

My two cents. Best regards to all of you!

Altima wrote:
Now in a vacuum, it might seem like MEQs would get shafted switching to the save modifier system, but while generic small arms might be more potent against them, the weapons everyone crammed in their armies were now significantly less effective. In addition to that, the game shifted to make things significantly better for MEQs--cheaper units, more free stuff, more forgiving rules, etc.

It's worth noting that an AP-1 applied to a 3+ save has significantly more impact than one applied to a 5+ save. It's far from an uncommon opinion that the proliferation of AP-1/AP-2 in 9th Ed significantly increased the vulnerability of Marines, even if they were occasionally getting 5+ or 6+ saves from historically anti-Marine weapons.

Having anti-MEQ weapons be nearly as effective as before, while substantially increasing the effectiveness of small arms, made it a lot easier to put wounds down. As well, the change in cover system meant that those heavy anti-Marine weapons were still reducing them to poor saves, whereas before they could reliably claim a 4+ cover save in ruins.

I think with 10th Ed GW finally realized that in a game with 3+ saves out the wazoo, that first point of AP is substantially more valuable than succeeding ones. Removing easy access to AP-1 and reducing AP in general across the board has done a lot to make armor relevant again, with the hard-cap on cover bonuses ensuring that it doesn't become oppressive. It's a decent resolution, but it still feels odd to me that a Guardsman gets a save against a heavy bolter. I never minded not getting a save on my Gaunts or Guardsmen; it let Marine small arms be effective without needing a ton of shots or special rules, it gave me a reason to hug cover, and it made that 3+ save (or 4+ on my Stormtroopers) feel special.

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.

 catbarf wrote:

I think with 10th Ed GW finally realized that in a game with 3+ saves out the wazoo, that first point of AP is substantially more valuable than succeeding ones. Removing easy access to AP-1 and reducing AP in general across the board has done a lot to make armor relevant again, with the hard-cap on cover bonuses ensuring that it doesn't become oppressive.

Then they should have also removed the extra wounds they gave to Marines to compensate for the extra lethality.

 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.