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.

A.T. wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
I'd argue Imperial Guard and maybe Chaos also got extensive lore offerings in that era, as much as Space Marines in the case of Guard. However, these were tilted towards Black Library and Forge World rather than White Dwarf (excepting the traitor legions in Index: Astartes).

Guard were in all the 3e campaigns and seemed to fall off to (extensive) forgeworld support in 4th.

I suspect the more ork-heavy stuff in early 3rd was driven a bit by gorka-morka cross promotion, similar to the way the 40k inquisition lived and died with the 54mm range. And then a ton of chaos/renegade stuff from forgeworld, the eye of terror campaign, gaunts ghosts, etc.

Aside from the orks the xenos always seemed to be guest stars in the (mostly forgeworld) campaigns that I remember.

Yeah, the Orks lucked out in a sense by being the antagonists in the 3rd War for Armageddon campaign, followed by Chaos in the 13th Black Crusade campaign. The third campaign, The Fall of Medusa, included every major faction but also had much flatter, less impactful lore and did much less to add lore to the included factions.

I accept Andykp's point about Ork lore being gutted from the 2nd to 3rd edition codices in terms of their culture and organisation. However, 3rd edition was great for lore about how Orks run a major campaign. The 3rd War for Armageddon website was a goldmine of information on this and included new Ork formations not previously seen in any significant way (such as teleporta forces and artillery warbands), as well as their strengths and weaknesses in large-scale warfare. I still read the website via the Wayback Machine these days (most of the flashplayer maps even run with an emulator plug in!).

I think 3rd edition is perhaps the one that most marks out Orks as a truly terrifying threat in the lore, and not just comic relief. Although I agree that more of the 2nd edition cultural lore should have been published in some way. Weirdly, a lot of that lore eventually filtered through into the structure of the army lists and wargear options, but without the lengthy explanations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Turnip Monster wrote:
I really liked Codex: Witch Hunters. I don't know what edition it was (4th I think?) but it gave you a real sense of what the Inquisition & Sisters of Battle were about. It also accidentally made Sisters of Battle really good at the start of 5th Edition which was funny lol

Tail end of 3rd edition, which shares a design paradigm with the first codices of 4th edition.

I think it is a real shame we never got Codex: Alienhunters to match the other two. For years, the sole Ordo Xenos Inquisitor available for 40k was Solomon Lok from FW.

My vote for best period is either 3e Big Black Book or 4e with 3.5-5e codices depending on the army. I think you could also run 4e with later books, if you wanted Ad Mech and so on.

The only thing I'd consider changing would be the really punishing vehicle rules, especially for transports. Maybe not going as far as 5e did, but doing something about the rolling deathtrap aspect would make more interesting lists much more viable.

I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).

Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.

When the tau appeared in 3rd and started to blow marine armies off the table, there was a huge amount of anger from marine players that they were suddenly not so invincible.

The 'does this reflect the fluff' chestnut is almost always raised for marines and so we just see continual inflation of them through editions, while other armies and units don't have the same advertising agency behind them.

Well, for my part I started as an Imperial Guard player, so getting armour saves at all was a novelty

Edit: AP 4+ was not that common, so 4+ saves were... Ok.

I think Firewarriors upset Marines not just due to their guns, but that pesky 4+ save.

Whilst of course not the best save in the game, it was tricky. Bolters wouldn’t cut it, and given how cheap Firewarriors were (10 points each? I think) turning enough decent AP weapons on them felt somehow wasteful, Spesh when Battlesuits were farting about elsewhere.

 Hellebore wrote:
I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).

Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.

When the tau appeared in 3rd and started to blow marine armies off the table, there was a huge amount of anger from marine players that they were suddenly not so invincible.

The 'does this reflect the fluff' chestnut is almost always raised for marines and so we just see continual inflation of them through editions, while other armies and units don't have the same advertising agency behind them.

I greatly enjoyed that era. I played Eldar 3rd through 5th and Chaos Marines in late 3rd.

It has been many years, but I did enjoy those editions much more than the 6th-7th edition era.

Imo any Marine player that was upset by Tau wasn't worth their salt. 4+ Saves were easily overcome by Whirlwinds, Heavy Bolters and Assault Cannons, and Tau remained incredibly squishy in CC.

Unfortunately it seems like most Marine players dream of just standing still and Rapid Firing foes to oblivion, rather than maneuvre and bring reasonable fire support.

3rd-4th Ed Tau were a wonderful army. This was the days before they became super-mecha-focussed. Those Tau vehicles like the Hammerhead and Devilfish look so hot next to Fire Warriors and smaller Battlesuits like the Stealth and Crisis.

 Hellebore wrote:
I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).

Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.

I played Tyranids and Guard in that era. Not getting armor saves was fine when Marines were only throwing one shot apiece at over half range, and died when they lost a single wound. Guard especially had no trouble out-dakkaing Marines point-for-point, especially from cover; the danger was losing partial squads to morale or getting roped into close combat.

Post-SM2.0 in 8th was a much, much more frustrating time as a non-Marine player, with Marines getting multiple shots and re-rolls everywhere and W2 and 2+ in cover and the new AP system actually reducing the effectiveness of classic anti-Marine weapons like plasma.

 catbarf wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).

Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.

I played Tyranids and Guard in that era. Not getting armor saves was fine when Marines were only throwing one shot apiece at over half range, and died when they lost a single wound. Guard especially had no trouble out-dakkaing Marines point-for-point, especially from cover; the danger was losing partial squads to morale or getting roped into close combat.

Post-SM2.0 in 8th was a much, much more frustrating time as a non-Marine player, with Marines getting multiple shots and re-rolls everywhere and W2 and 2+ in cover and the new AP system actually reducing the effectiveness of classic anti-Marine weapons like plasma.

Certainly as the game developed and AP2 became more common. But then they gave terminators a 5+ invulnerable because things were able to one shot them and the marine rules arms race began and hasn't really stopped.

The 2 wound marine in the current paradigm is being eroded by 2 wound weapons becoming more common - the 10th ed equivalent of a the 4th ed AP2 spam.

At least with ASM, a -1 affects a marine, whereas AP5 did nothing to them. It is a really hard rule to balance, because every point your save increases, you ignore a whole AP band, so Sv3+ negates 3 whole AP bands, while modifiers apply incrementally across all saves.

There are a lot of ways the AP system could have been tweaked and the HH rules have shown a few patches, but no real changes to the core all or nothing mechanic.

You could for example have 5+ the minimum save (as 6+ is really not worth wasting your time rolling), and have AP=Sv be -1 to save while AP >Sv ignores it. Would give AP1 some value against 2+ terminators and would balance AP2 so you wouldn't need invulnerables on everything.

Or, you could just let the actual Save value represent the chance of them being killed, rather than applying AP. 5+ to save is already low, mucking about with it is just insulting.

You can then apply USRs to weapons: Anti Infantry - infantry models get -1 to save from this weapon; Anti Tank - infantry models get no save, etc.

Andykp wrote:

Uptonius wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Another thought on my distaste for 3rd. And I’m afraid I’m going to sound like a right prick. Because frankly, I am being a bit of a prick with this.

3rd not only brought me into contact with WAAC Weirdos, but was also the edition that seemed to think a rich background was for wimps, because it was all but excised from the Codexes.

That was jarring, and has tainted not only my view of the edition, but those to whom 3rd was their first brush with 40K. And that’s not really fair.

But as someone so invested and intrigued by the background, to find it excised and so suddenly exposed to buzzwords like “optimal”, “competitive” and “meta” was oddly upsetting. The hobby I’d adored seemed to be turned on its head. As if a tide of goons (in reality, probably just a dozen or so really talkative goons) had invaded, determined to make the game something it was never intended to be. Like someone taking a stock Ford Fiesta to the Indy 500, and complaining it didn’t perform as well as custom modified racing cars.

As I said, this is beyond a grossly unfair opinion, but it still colours my view to this day.

Fair enough. My only curiosity is your take on "rich background". The Index Astartes articles fleshed out the Legions more than ever before. We got the Craftworld Eldar, Tau, Necrons, Witch Hunters, Demon Hunters, Deathwatch, we had PDFs for the epicast titans, FW was kicking out cool stuff, Speed Freeks [lol autocorreced to Greeks], Armageddon, The Hive Fleet invasion (technically 4th but that's really a continuation of 3.5), white dwarf was adding new units (Mounted Demonettes, Rail Rifles, Kroot Armies, Armored Company) and so much more.
I felt the lore and background was more open for the players to make their own.
At Dakka we had a guy with a Chaos army that was a hockey team (including Zambonis on his transports), and don't get me started on the Vehicle Design Rules.

I will say that the tournament/competitive scene does seem to have really amped up around then. But I think that was mostly because the game was fairly balanced if you didn't have endless collections of models.
I felt the community was far more open and accepting in those days. However... It was mostly guys 30+ years old with a few kids under 12. I think I could count the number of teens my age on one hand. Oh man... And the one single time my girlfriend walked in was a nightmare (to be fair she new of the crowd and dressed to impress).

We had ladder campaigns and the store battle ladders. We had a very competitive scene but 99% of our games were not cut throat gaming. Mostly friendly pick up games that contributed to us all getting more than one game in a week. I practically lived in their lounge, getting in as many games as possible from around 1998 up until they closed and became Battlefield: Manchester (no windows, no parking, across from the park with the most homeless).

ORKS are my go to example of how 3rd did armies dirty. They were gutted by the 3rd codex. 1st edition ORKS had near 500 pages of fluff and rules across three of the best books gw ever made (never mind the epic stuff), 2nd trimmed that but the background all stayed the same and relevant. 3rd edition came and it was all washed away and replaced with pamphlet of a codex with maybe a dozen pages of fluff total. It was a massacre. If that’s when you came to 40K then your knowledge of your faction was so limited. And like mad doc I am a whore for the fluff, I love the back ground. And 3rd killed that off for a long time, even all the add ins like eye of terror etc didn’t come close to just one factions back ground for more 3rd.

I've never gotten why people want lore in rulebooks in the first place and always felt that, especially with GW pricing, that lore and rules should just be permanently excised from the other to cut costs and leave GW to price gouge the fancy, more artfully produced codices while having large rulebooks similar to how early editions of fantasy compiled their lists. Especially in regards that codices post 2e are often just reprinting 2e articles, or are only slightly altered over time. Fundamentally if you've read one codex you've read them all and every subsequent lore packaging becomes wasted space you have to flip through.

I'm of two minds. The lore wrapped up in the rules is IMO one of the passive advertisements GW uses.

It grounds the rules in something, so that when you play you're pulling on the emotional perception of the setting and characters. It's less abstract.

On the other hand, I hate it when they just republish them over and over again.

I'd love a literal encyclopaedia series released in volumes alongside the army lists, but i personally think the immersive intangible connection to the setting and units is lost when they are separated.

So, I dunno. Always a two book release sold as one?

 Hellebore wrote:


Certainly as the game developed and AP2 became more common. But then they gave terminators a 5+ invulnerable because things were able to one shot them and the marine rules arms race began and hasn't really stopped.

The 2 wound marine in the current paradigm is being eroded by 2 wound weapons becoming more common - the 10th ed equivalent of a the 4th ed AP2 spam.

At least with ASM, a -1 affects a marine, whereas AP5 did nothing to them. It is a really hard rule to balance, because every point your save increases, you ignore a whole AP band, so Sv3+ negates 3 whole AP bands, while modifiers apply incrementally across all saves.

There are a lot of ways the AP system could have been tweaked and the HH rules have shown a few patches, but no real changes to the core all or nothing mechanic.

You could for example have 5+ the minimum save (as 6+ is really not worth wasting your time rolling), and have AP=Sv be -1 to save while AP >Sv ignores it. Would give AP1 some value against 2+ terminators and would balance AP2 so you wouldn't need invulnerables on everything.

Or, you could just let the actual Save value represent the chance of them being killed, rather than applying AP. 5+ to save is already low, mucking about with it is just insulting.

You can then apply USRs to weapons: Anti Infantry - infantry models get -1 to save from this weapon; Anti Tank - infantry models get no save, etc.

AP modifiers as rules are dumb and not how armor penetration works in the first place. They make some sense in the context of Warhammer Fantasy but never make that much sense with 40k because ballistic penetration is more an all or nothing affair. Although to this end it'd make far more sense to give everyone Armor Values rather than bothering with saves at all except for energy shields rolled before armor. One of the things I've hated about 40k is that invul saves, such as applied to terminators to make them more "durable" are just garbage, especially in the modifier focused system of nuhammer. That 5++ would be good if invul saves functioned like wards but regrettably they don't, so it might as well not even exist. Or alternatively with the idea of just switching everything to AV, roll energy saves first, then roll the strength of hits that punch through to see if anything pens.

 Wyzilla wrote:
AP modifiers as rules are dumb and not how armor penetration works in the first place. They make some sense in the context of Warhammer Fantasy but never make that much sense with 40k because ballistic penetration is more an all or nothing affair...

Ehhh...I'm hesitant to say "you're wrong" here because I'm not a ballistics expert, but, well...
If two men fire on the frontal armor of a Tiger tank some distance aways, one with a 9mm pistol and the other with a 57mm AT gun, neither of them are going to do much. IIRC the Tiger's frontal armor is just too thick for either of those to be effective.
If the man with the pistol tells the man with the AT gun that they are equally likely to penetrate the Tiger, the pistoleer is a fething moron, because the 57mm AT gun is going to be able to take advantage of lucky shots into weak points - vision slits, machine gun ports, cracks, bad welds, field repairs of damaged plates, etc - in ways that a 9mm pistol simply cannot. We can argue whether good aim/luck would be reasonable to model in a game, but at the end of the day a 57mm AP round is always going to have more penetrative power than a 9mm pistol round.
IMO, something like an ASM is the best way to represent this, with the main hangup being the fact that GW stuck to d6s for penetration rolls/armor saves, which limits how granular we can get with ASMs. GW's old all-or-nothing AP system just does not have any means to handle this outside of patches via special rules (eg. Choppas or some of the versions of Rending), which is why regular Space Marines used to be more scared of Battle Cannons than lasguns (AP3 vs AP0), but Terminators were more terrified of lasguns than Battle Cannons (both had the exact same effect on the Terminator's armor save (ie. gak-all), but lasguns could be Rapid Fire'd en masse and fish for failed saves where the Battle Cannon only got to fire once).

Also, obligatory "super spacesteel automagic penetrator caps" and obligatory reminder that a lot of the weapons involved are not going to be doing ballistic penetration anyways as they are not ballistic weapons (lascannons, melta, plasma, Eldar lances, etc).

I do agree that ward saves are a better way to represent the sorts of defensive things that otherwise granted invulns, though.

 waefre_1 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
AP modifiers as rules are dumb and not how armor penetration works in the first place. They make some sense in the context of Warhammer Fantasy but never make that much sense with 40k because ballistic penetration is more an all or nothing affair...

Ehhh...I'm hesitant to say "you're wrong" here because I'm not a ballistics expert, but, well...
If two men fire on the frontal armor of a Tiger tank some distance aways, one with a 9mm pistol and the other with a 57mm AT gun, neither of them are going to do much. IIRC the Tiger's frontal armor is just too thick for either of those to be effective.
If the man with the pistol tells the man with the AT gun that they are equally likely to penetrate the Tiger, the pistoleer is a fething moron, because the 57mm AT gun is going to be able to take advantage of lucky shots into weak points - vision slits, machine gun ports, cracks, bad welds, field repairs of damaged plates, etc - in ways that a 9mm pistol simply cannot. We can argue whether good aim/luck would be reasonable to model in a game, but at the end of the day a 57mm AP round is always going to have more penetrative power than a 9mm pistol round.
IMO, something like an ASM is the best way to represent this, with the main hangup being the fact that GW stuck to d6s for penetration rolls/armor saves, which limits how granular we can get with ASMs. GW's old all-or-nothing AP system just does not have any means to handle this outside of patches via special rules (eg. Choppas or some of the versions of Rending), which is why regular Space Marines used to be more scared of Battle Cannons than lasguns (AP3 vs AP0), but Terminators were more terrified of lasguns than Battle Cannons (both had the exact same effect on the Terminator's armor save (ie. gak-all), but lasguns could be Rapid Fire'd en masse and fish for failed saves where the Battle Cannon only got to fire once).

Also, obligatory "super spacesteel automagic penetrator caps" and obligatory reminder that a lot of the weapons involved are not going to be doing ballistic penetration anyways as they are not ballistic weapons (lascannons, melta, plasma, Eldar lances, etc).

I do agree that ward saves are a better way to represent the sorts of defensive things that otherwise granted invulns, though.

With regards to Armor Values which trump saves anyway though, that AT gun analogy works perfectly within the system because you tool the strength so that against AV14 or whatever it if rolls a 6 on the additive it socres a penetration - a lucky hit against those weaker points in the armor's front facing. This is also partly why I prefer AV as an idea to saves in the first place as they're more granular without getting into the silliness of modifiers. Plus it just cuts down on time spent messing around with dice since it's part of the attack roll.

Armour penetration does work differently on armoured vehicles vs body armour. Generally, if you don't penetrate an armoured vehicle it is probably fine unless the blast was especially powerful. On the other hand, direct hits that do not penetrate body armour can be heavily degrading to the point of combat ineffectiveness due to force being transmitted through the armour and padding into the squishy bits beyond.

However, this is comparatively marginal in a wargame the scale of 40k using D6s, so I don't think the ASM system necessarily models this better than the old AP system.

 Hellebore wrote:
I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).

Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.

When the tau appeared in 3rd and started to blow marine armies off the table, there was a huge amount of anger from marine players that they were suddenly not so invincible.

The 'does this reflect the fluff' chestnut is almost always raised for marines and so we just see continual inflation of them through editions, while other armies and units don't have the same advertising agency behind them.

Started with Space Marines, went on to Tau and finally settled on Imperial Guard.

I’d rather have more lore, guess it’s all about personal preference, must I admit that since 3rd they just rehashed lore and each new codex you had to search for new bits of lore in there. You’ve got to remember that the codexs are written to attract new players so they need some lore in there. I would love it if hey wrote some new original lore only books for the factions like waargh ORKS.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haighus wrote:
Armour penetration does work differently on armoured vehicles vs body armour. Generally, if you don't penetrate an armoured vehicle it is probably fine unless the blast was especially powerful. On the other hand, direct hits that do not penetrate body armour can be heavily degrading to the point of combat ineffectiveness due to force being transmitted through the armour and padding into the squishy bits beyond.

However, this is comparatively marginal in a wargame the scale of 40k using D6s, so I don't think the ASM system necessarily models this better than the old AP system.

To some of us old sweats the AP system is the new fancy way and ASM is going back to the good old days.

 Hellebore wrote:
I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).

Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.

When the tau appeared in 3rd and started to blow marine armies off the table, there was a huge amount of anger from marine players that they were suddenly not so invincible.

The 'does this reflect the fluff' chestnut is almost always raised for marines and so we just see continual inflation of them through editions, while other armies and units don't have the same advertising agency behind them.

I played Orks mostly in 3e, though I played a few games as Marines and Chaos. I actually agree with you about modifiers, I think judicious use of mods could have done a lot for that game. I'd scale it down from what it was in 2e when I think the mods were too much, but a -1 for autocannon/heavy bolter, -2 for Plasma, -3 for melta style system would have worked fine I think.

It's just not really a deal breaker for me in terms of enjoying the game. I like that Grimdark Future essentially works this way, but it's by no means a perfectly designed game either.

 Da Boss wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
I would be interested to see the demographic breakdown of people who like 3rd - 5th (design).

Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.

When the tau appeared in 3rd and started to blow marine armies off the table, there was a huge amount of anger from marine players that they were suddenly not so invincible.

The 'does this reflect the fluff' chestnut is almost always raised for marines and so we just see continual inflation of them through editions, while other armies and units don't have the same advertising agency behind them.

I played Orks mostly in 3e, though I played a few games as Marines and Chaos. I actually agree with you about modifiers, I think judicious use of mods could have done a lot for that game. I'd scale it down from what it was in 2e when I think the mods were too much, but a -1 for autocannon/heavy bolter, -2 for Plasma, -3 for melta style system would have worked fine I think.

It's just not really a deal breaker for me in terms of enjoying the game. I like that Grimdark Future essentially works this way, but it's by no means a perfectly designed game either.

GDF 2.x is a pretty solid system imo, and using the core rules to use 40k stats doesn't work half bad either. But the new edition feels like it's inventing whole new issues like totally crippling the idea of long ranged firefights at all.

Oh yeah, I also stay with 2.X. I don't like the new version and they seem very focused on selling their own miniatures now. I've got all the PDFs from 2.X saved and I'm happy with it.

 Hellebore wrote:
Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.

Three wounds to kill a guy in 3+, two wounds to kill a guy in 4+, one wound to kill a guy in 5+ or worse, less cover for the 5+ guy of course.

But higher saves gave higher uncertainty when using the wrong AP against the target so you had to over-commit to be sure. AP modifiers can push away from this to where the wrong gun is 'good enough' and the right gun is slightly better, squeezing the odds together.

A.T. wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Because the game was slanted entirely to 3+ saves due to the AP system, so marine players got a fun game. Anyone who had 4+ or less saves tended to get mown down like chaff.

Three wounds to kill a guy in 3+, two wounds to kill a guy in 4+, one wound to kill a guy in 5+ or worse, less cover for the 5+ guy of course.

But higher saves gave higher uncertainty when using the wrong AP against the target so you had to over-commit to be sure. AP modifiers can push away from this to where the wrong gun is 'good enough' and the right gun is slightly better, squeezing the odds together.

It is technically 1.5 wounds to defeat 5+ and 1.2 to defeat 6+, but in practice most small arms ignored 5+ and almost all ignored 6+, so these become 1 wound for AP5 or AP6.

 Haighus wrote:
It is technically 1.5 wounds to defeat 5+ and 1.2 to defeat 6+, but in practice most small arms ignored 5+ and almost all ignored 6+, so these become 1 wound for AP5 or AP6.

Yes, it started as a slightly longer and less readable post on bolters, the benefits of toughness 4, and the way that slower moves and shorter ranges interacted with how efficiently smaller units could concentrate fire.
But it got a bit wordy :p

Nostalgia opinion: 2nd was the most fun because it was when all the crazy stuff was still in play.

Slightly more objective opinion: 5th was when I played it the most and still enjoyed it and its been going downhill since.

A.T. wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
It is technically 1.5 wounds to defeat 5+ and 1.2 to defeat 6+, but in practice most small arms ignored 5+ and almost all ignored 6+, so these become 1 wound for AP5 or AP6.

Yes, it started as a slightly longer and less readable post on bolters, the benefits of toughness 4, and the way that slower moves and shorter ranges interacted with how efficiently smaller units could concentrate fire.
But it got a bit wordy :p

Sounds like an interesting post though, I'm good with wordy explanations

 Wyzilla wrote:
AP modifiers as rules are dumb and not how armor penetration works in the first place. They make some sense in the context of Warhammer Fantasy but never make that much sense with 40k because ballistic penetration is more an all or nothing affair.

If you're analyzing armored vehicles with roughly homogenous armor protection, sure.

For an infantryman, even power armor varies from low protection at the joints to bulletproof on the plates. The armor save is not checking whether a lasgun pierced through the solid ceramite, it's checking whether a lasgun found a weak enough spot to inflict damage. An autocannon is going to have a different idea of what constitutes a weak spot, and may be able to pierce armor locations that a lasgun wouldn't, even if it can't blow straight through power armor altogether like a lascannon can.

I like the idea of armor save modifiers, I just don't like how GW implemented them. 3rd-7th produced a gameplay model that wasn't any more realistic in its depiction of body armor but created defined niches for weapons; the problem was that in a MEQ-dominated game that encouraged massing as much AP3 as possible rather than a balanced mix of capabilities.

The issue with the modifier system of 8th-10th is that it's much easier to degrade saves but much harder to deny them entirely. Guardsmen now get saves most of the time while Marines can still be greatly degraded by just AP-1, but still get a save against lascannons and plasma guns. It devalues both good saves and high AP while making poor saves and moderate AP much more useful than they used to be, and that significant change has created knock-on effects that even two editions later GW is still dealing with.

I feel like 9th and 10th has the right approach to unit resilience - but due to lack of knowledge about the game I can’t properly comment on the implementation.

But consider the humble in Terminator.

In 2nd Ed, they were all but invulnerable to small arms fire, saving on 3+ on 2D6. And they had a not unreasonable chance of shrugging off even the heaviest weapons.

3rd-8th? 2+ Save in the AP world seemed good. Except….AP2 weapons weren’t hard to squeeze in, and with just a single wound each at T4, and ever increasing squad head counts and volume of fire? They just weren’t as tough as they could be.

9th - 10th? OK. They have a higher Toughness, their 2+ save (and an inv maybe?), but importantly? Multiple Wounds.

So in 9th and 10th, they are resilient against a great many small arms fire. Some may have AP, but may lack the Damage for each failed save to drop a Terminator. So the three stats combined bring the resilience they need (deserve?) - but they remain vulnerable to high strength, high save mod and fixed or high damage weapons, having to rely on that Inv if they have it.

Now that’s just Terminators, but it’s an example I’m pretty familiar with overall/

Thinking about it, the increasing utility of rapid fire weapons also played a role, thereby making plasma guns far outstrip the other options outside niche circumstances.

A 3rd edition plasma gun could fire one shot out to 24" or two to 12" if stationary, or one shot at 12" if moving. If firing two shots, it blew up on a 1 or a 2. The model couldn't assault afterwards. If your unit plans to be mobile, it gets the same number of shots and range with a meltagun, or further range with a grenade launcher.

By 5th edition plasma guns always fired one shot to 24" and two to 12", even if they moved, and only ever blew up on a 1. Other special weapons got no improvement.

This significant buff to rapid fire weapons made the game more lethal in general, but I think it was particularly bad for plasma gun lethality.

There was also pieplates, big AP3 or even 2 large blast were pretty much anti-everything weapons.

 Haighus wrote:
By 5th edition plasma guns always fired one shot to 24" and two to 12", even if they moved, and only ever blew up on a 1. Other special weapons got no improvement.

IIRC it was a mixed bag with melta being so important for hitting vehicles in 5th.
But the rapid fire change was big for attacks after disembarking and deepstriking (or rather deepstriking sternguard, since chaos terminators were already running plasmacide in 4th).

I think I get the reason for the change though as it did give an incentive to move into charge range and risk the attacking unit. In 3rd edition if you were just outside of charge range you'd sit there for two turns shooting instead, or one turn shooting and one turn backing up while shooting.