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 insaniak wrote:

I've generally said in 'What was the best edition' discussions in the past that 2nd edition was the most fun, while 5th was the best written ruleset (and thus the most functional and playable game). It wasn't perfect - vehicle rules and wound allocation needed work, most prominently - but was the best the game has been, IMO.

4th was a mess, and was the edition that saw me take a break from the game due to just not being at all fun to play.

That's funny, I'd flip those two. I found 5th to be a downgrade from 4th, and I'd put 4th at top tier 40k.

I also liked 2nd, but it got so clunky and easy to abuse. But if you can reign things in a bit, it was an awesome game and had more "texture" than anything since.

 Da Boss wrote:
Do I recall correctly that I think it was Hellebore from this forum that suggested a way to improve Eldar in the core rules was to switch BS from being a flat number to hit to being a comparison between Initiative and BS like how WS is compared to WS for assault?

That way, it'd be slightly harder to hit Eldar with shooting, representing their natural agility.

It would work out pretty similarly for a lot of the factions, though Orks would be a bit screwed by their I2 and maybe would need a boost to I3 or something to compensate.

An interesting thing to think about anyway - giving more ways to be defensive than just big armour or toughness.

In a system like that, being in cover could boost initiative scores, meaning you're more likely to go first in CC and less likely to get hit by shooting.

It has been something I've posted about in the past, although I doubt the idea has been unique to me.

Orks had I2 in 2nd ed when all it did was make them lose CC ties, which was a pretty minimal effect.


My reasoning was more around the lack of scalability for BS and the opposed value of WS. They could quite easily have an opposed value for BS and then you get great scalability, rather than the effectively 3 BS values, 3, 4, 5.

And the design strategy was around reusing the 2nd ed profile to its max, rather than adding or removing stats.

So you can take the 2nd ed profile (which is the 3rd ed profile with M instead of Sv) and use I as the opposed value for BS and WS (or have I oppose BS but determine strikes first in melee) and you have built a design paradigm that allows for multiple styles of game player rather than T,W, Sv that we got in 3rd and now.

And, like the change to stats for 3rd in order to fit that design paradigm, you might change stats for this to ensure I2 units aren't mowed down. IMO the value of the opposed BS far outweighs the issues of trying to stick with stats that weren't designed around it.

You could take the current S vs T mechanic and apply it here.



3rd jaded me so hard on my space wolf army, changing how I played so that I now just ran as fast as I could down the centre of the board because AP and Sv were now my best friends. I hated playing with my marine armies in the 3rd paradigm because of this. And I didn't like playing non marine armies because of the opposite problem. The all or nothing of the game was just not appealing.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I need to refresh my memory of 3rd Ed.

But that involves reading the books, which I won’t ever do again ever. So Nyeah

Well I guess there's nothing like a strong opinion and an unwillingness to do research to liven up internet discourse.

Mostly because I don’t own them, and given how boring the 3rd Ed ones are? I just can’t bring myself to pay good money for such glorified pamphlets


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There was also the loss of stuff like Overwatch which again heavily favoured close combat oriented armies.

If memory serves, in 2nd Ed any unit could go on Overwatch. The squad gave up its movement, and suffered negative modifiers to hit on Overwatch if the resulting target was move from, into or between cover. It also gave up its shooting in my own turn (though I could break Overwatch the same turn I set it).

Now, Overwatch is a double edged sword for sure, and can ruin the game for close combat oriented armies. Consider modern Tau where the entire army can just stand still, and wait to react to your movement in your turn. That would be lame.

But in-keeping with 3rd Ed’s ‘baby, bath water and sod it let’s just chuck the bath too’ approach, they just entirely removed it.

There was so much lost it’s not even funny. And it resulted in a bland, flavourless, boring set of rules of limited subtlety.

[img]"Glorified Pamphlets" eh? Imo some of the best codex lore came out of that era. The Necron Codex is fantastic. The Space Marine snippets about how careless the Space Marines can be when responding to Imperial worlds, the nature of their battlefleets and of course the Ultramarine chapter roster, also great. The IG doctrines and regimental references. The introduction of the Tau. It wasn't a lot of lore, but a lot of what was there was quality.

And a lot of the flavor came in the form of rules. Oh look, Imperial Guard Drop troops with chem inhalers. It wasn't some passing mention in the lore, it was something you could use.

One of my favorites from the 3rd ed SM book:

Necrons are a genuinely notable exception. But if memory serves, that was a 4th Ed Codex? Certainly by that point there’d been a shift from the early ones, like Dark Eldar.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Necrons are a genuinely notable exception. But if memory serves, that was a 4th Ed Codex? Certainly by that point there’d been a shift from the early ones, like Dark Eldar.

Mid 2002, after all of the 'normal' releases but before all of the 3.5 books and the two inquisition books.

IIRC, Necrons started the trend towards more fluff in the books again, after the disappointment of the bare bones earlier books.

The early 3rd codices mostly express lore through in-universe lore snippets from an Imperial perspective. These remain some of the best examples of such, but the books were understandably light in lore overall (there were also lore snippets alongside the unit entries).

Starting with the Tau codex in 2001 (IIRC), the codices shifted to what was broadly the pattern going forward to this day- a segment of lore for several pages at the beginning followed by snippets with the unit entries- these are much more substantial books and include some of the best-regarded codices ever from a lore perspective and how the books translate that lore into rules. The late 3rd codices also kept the in-universe notes too.

In contrast to later editions, the lore section also appears to be an in-universe perspective, although not overtly credited as such. This is most apparent in the second Imperial Guard codex of 3rd edition, where there is a historical analysis of the Guard with a lot of speculation. I reckon the Tau lore is from the perspective of a Water caste diplomat too.

So does this all basically corroborate a theory that "classic 40K" lives somewhere within rulesets MKII, MKIII & MKIV?

 Insectum7 wrote:

One of my favorites from the 3rd ed SM book:

Spoiler:

That is a good one.

This is one of my favourites:


I like how it covers a lot of the typical deployments a Guard unit might be engaged in, as well as highlighting how much regiments change over their lifespan. This one has picked up surviving units from three other regiments and is now on garrison duty following heavy casualties in frontline combat. The garrison environment suits itself to small forces making a difference in small engagements (such as the mentioned Eldar raid). I really like lore that expands the scope of the setting and gives ideas for your own wargaming.

 tauist wrote:
So does this all basically corroborate a theory that "classic 40K" lives somewhere within rulesets MKII, MKIII & MKIV?

Yes. 2nd was the foundation and framework. 3rd was the fleshing out and setting of tone. 4th enshrined the setting.

5th bastardized the lore (the Ward era). I treat anything after 4th as fan fiction.

If you wanted lore in 3rd, you needed to head to WD, not the codexes. While there were a ton of little snippets in the codexes, the real meat was in the chapter approved articles of the era.

While they did collect them and put out a few books, I could see how it would suck if you didn’t subscribe (or regularly pick up) WD.

Not to “Got mine” the issue, but I did regularly pick them up, so I don’t personally feel the lack of lore in 3rd. I started picking it up at the tail end of 2nd, and stopped in March of ’04, so just missed the last few issues for 3rd.

Classic 40k has always been an elusive game that exists only in the platonic world of the forms.

40k is what would happen if a movie studio filmed a version of romeo and juliet, and the studio decided that the ending is bad, they can only film a version where juliet wakes up before romeo takes the poison. Also the original play was never finished and nobody ever produced or read it.

 tauist wrote:
So does this all basically corroborate a theory that "classic 40K" lives somewhere within rulesets MKII, MKIII & MKIV?

The 'oldhammer' ruleset runs all the way through to 7th, but past 5th it was an increasingly bloated apocalypse-style game with aircraft, superheavies, piles of random tables and detachments and extra actions.

3rd was my cue to get out and start spending my mid to late teens money on video games, music and socialising.

Still prefer it to 8th onwards though.

Yes I dropped 40k with the advent of 3rd. What did it for me was the change in movement rates. Now everything moved the same, be it genestealer or guardsman. And running/charging became random and the same for everyone. Of course we played with 2nd ed model densities, not realising if we crammed the board everyone caught everyone else. But still games because benny hill chases.

Didn't play again until 8th.

Oh and they got rid of my stealer cult...

 Insectum7 wrote:
[img]"Glorified Pamphlets" eh? Imo some of the best codex lore came out of that era. The Necron Codex is fantastic. The Space Marine snippets about how careless the Space Marines can be when responding to Imperial worlds, the nature of their battlefleets and of course the Ultramarine chapter roster, also great. The IG doctrines and regimental references. The introduction of the Tau. It wasn't a lot of lore, but a lot of what was there was quality.

Agreed entirely. I started in 3rd and actually got my Tyranids codex before I got the main rules, so I had no understanding of the universe at all, but what was in the codex painted a perfect picture of the faction and how the Imperials respond to it. When you open the codex the very first thing you see is a full-page black-and-white art piece of scary-looking monsters swarming across the terrain at night, with an accompanying couple of paragraphs, told in first person, about spotting the Tyranids moving silently, wordlessly, through the tall grass. Then there's a propaganda/public awareness poster, a speculative lineage, a dissection report, communiques from Imperial officers struggling to hold the line, the last testimony (before execution) of one of the guys that dug up Old One Eye.

It might have been light on fictional in-universe history, but it was so much more evocative than twenty dry pages of 'this happened and then this happened and then Captain Beefcake punched out the Swarmlord and the threat was stopped (but it will return)'.

(Also, I'd be curious to hear why you prefer 4th over 5th. Aside from wound allocation shenanigans that can be avoided by casually spinning up the dreadsock, my only major complaint with 5th is how the codices broke it.)

 catbarf wrote:

(Also, I'd be curious to hear why you prefer 4th over 5th. Aside from wound allocation shenanigans that can be avoided by casually spinning up the dreadsock, my only major complaint with 5th is how the codices broke it.)

Wound shenanigans have already been mentioned, but a few others that really got me were:

1: Vehicles toughened up and became cheaper, and while that's nice for vehicles I felt it took a lot of emphasis away from infantry. Imo 4th was the last edition that was infantry focused. Deployment in 5th ed often looked like a parking lot.
2: High AP weapons ballooned in their availability. It's not a rules thing, just a codex thing. It began to hurt balance in a way that, again, took more focus away from basic infantry.
3: Which coincided with more-better invulnerable saves. 3++ proliferation and 4++ cover save as default (rather than starting at 5++ in 3rd-4th)
4: The Chaos replacement codex to 3.5, the Necron rewrite, the Ward era, and the corresponding loss of a very open-ended, highly customizable army paradigm (IG doctrines, chapter traits, etc.)
5: Kill Point missions, which was terrible for armies that favored large unit counts. Great for deathstars though. . .
6: Changes to post-Combat leadership modifiers (from outnumbering to kills) was really hard on some armies (mainly Crons for me).
And in a big, BIG way 7: The return of TLOS being used for everything, turning tables into shooting galleries overnight. This change really hurt the importance of maneuvering, as well as encouraged uglier tables. Forests were out, big opaque walls were in.


Larger in spoiler, just in case that's hard to read:


One last one, that I can't confirm now but is sorta my memory - 8: Locking options or builds behind named characters. Imo it was always much more fun to make your own Captain in your army, rather than "I take this character to unlock build X", which I think started happening more.
On related note 8.5: The loss of Rites of Battle as a default ability of Space Marine Captains, and locking it behind Sicarius. (Who I then took as Captain for every SM army through 7th edition, mainly for that rule)

Oh, 9! : I really liked 4th ed's Use Leadership For Shooting Target Choice rule. That was a great way to differentiate troops. I think 5th was "Shoot whatever you want!"

In fairness to 5th, area terrain did not fully conform to TLOS and stands of trees still should have blocked visibility a lot.

Edit: I misremembered. Area terrain had no effect on LoS in 5th, it only had special considerations for determining cover saves.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Wound shenanigans have already been mentioned, but a few others that really got me were:

1: Vehicles toughened up and became cheaper, and while that's nice for vehicles I felt it took a lot of emphasis away from infantry. Imo 4th was the last edition that was infantry focused. Deployment in 5th ed often looked like a parking lot.

Which led directly to hull points in 6th which made non skimmer and non flyer vehicles useless. Which led to things like riptides and wraithknights being classified as MC which ultimately led to the end of AV as a mechanic in 8th.

5: Kill Point missions, which was terrible for armies that favored large unit counts. Great for deathstars though. . .

It was a deliberate balancing effort because otherwise MSU was always advantaged. Locally we had lots of players who only ever wanted to use KPs because all they wanted to do was have their models fight. Objectives were for sissies.

And in a big, BIG way 7: The return of TLOS being used for everything, turning tables into shooting galleries overnight. This change really hurt the importance of maneuvering, as well as encouraged uglier tables. Forests were out, big opaque walls were in.


Larger in spoiler, just in case that's hard to read:

Spoiler:

Put a 24" range bubble on that model and it looks a lot less scary.

^But my Tactical Squads had 48" range Lascannons, and my opponents had 72" range Battlecannons or Railguns.

As in, the big, heavy, damage dealers could shoot nearly everywhere with little maneuvering effort. Unrelated, "leafblower" lists became popular for some reason. . .


Re: Kill Points - Understandably doing something about MSU made sense, but there are armies which naturally had higher unit counts. Orks in Trukks, or DE in Raiders, for example. It was a poor solution.

I mean, yes, if you were playing on a table with just half a dozen forest bases, you didn't have a lot of cover.

While the specifics of how it works have varied over the years, 40k has always worked best when the table has as much terrain as possible on it. From my experience, most people who complained about LOS and cover in 5th were just not using enough terrain.

I respect the opinion that made this thread, but I could not disagree with it more.

2nd ed was a convoluted mess. It was basically multi-model DnD with a bizarre injection of MtG. The models were bad - I do not care what anyone says - and the rules were a tangled mess.

3rd wasn’t perfect by any means. But it was a necessary cleansing to make the game actually playable. Likewise the lore shifted from info-dump to high-quality snippets with plenty left open to interpretation; a style which is not appreciated by nerds 40 years down the line, but is an objectively superior writing style and method of delivery.

And likewise, 4th ed was the closest 40k had ever come to greatness in almost all respects.

TLOS is the big reason why I think 4e was better than 5e these days. TLOS is bad and area terrain is good.

On the other missions, I could sometimes badger people into doing raids or attacker defender missions in my club, but not that often. A real shame, there were a lot of really cool ideas in those scenarios.

Although I do like some of the Imperial perspective background in 3e, as a primarily Xenos player I wanted stuff from MY perspective too. Makes sense for Tyranids, but I preferred the 4e Ork codex for background much more.

My problem with 2e was always just finding out that we'd been doing something wrong, in basically every game. Too many fiddly rules to remember for us, as teens.

I will say though, despite the obviously less technically impressive miniatures, the 2e starter was really good. Those cardboard ruins were a godsend when you were a kid starting out, because you could actually get a relatively decent game underway pretty much immediately. And the little book of scenarios with the background for the 2nd War for Armageddon was brilliant. I wish I could find a copy or even a pdf of that, but no one seems to have scanned it. The 3e starter by comparison was pretty lame.

 Insectum7 wrote:
And in a big, BIG way 7: The return of TLOS being used for everything, turning tables into shooting galleries overnight. This change really hurt the importance of maneuvering, as well as encouraged uglier tables. Forests were out, big opaque walls were in.

The change was to area terrain only - all of those ruined walls worked exactly the same way in 4th and 5th unless the players declared them as area terrain. Forests were the big affected piece of scenery as 4th used true line of sight for everything except area stuff.

IIRC by the rules as written a size 3 tank perched on top of a size 1 molehill could - by the rules - claim total concealment behind a size 2 bush. But only a sufficiently wide bush as true line of sight was still used to determine if area cover rules applied...


4e FAQ:
Q. Does an infantry model on a Size 3 hill count as size
3 or as size 5 (3+2) in regards to LOS into/over Area
Terrain and over other models? And what about a Size
3 tank on a hill?
A. The size of the hill is not added to the model’s size,
but rather the model counts as being the same size as
the hill. Both models therefore count as Size 3 for the
purpose of LOS over Area Terrain and other models.

5th also kinda fethed over Fearless armies with its No Retreat rule.

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
And in a big, BIG way 7: The return of TLOS being used for everything, turning tables into shooting galleries overnight. This change really hurt the importance of maneuvering, as well as encouraged uglier tables. Forests were out, big opaque walls were in.

The change was to area terrain only - all of those ruined walls worked exactly the same way in 4th and 5th unless the players declared them as area terrain. Forests were the big affected piece of scenery as 4th used true line of sight for everything except area stuff.

IIRC by the rules as written a size 3 tank perched on top of a size 1 molehill could - by the rules - claim total concealment behind a size 2 bush. But only a sufficiently wide bush as true line of sight was still used to determine if area cover rules applied...


4e FAQ:
Q. Does an infantry model on a Size 3 hill count as size
3 or as size 5 (3+2) in regards to LOS into/over Area
Terrain and over other models? And what about a Size
3 tank on a hill?
A. The size of the hill is not added to the model’s size,
but rather the model counts as being the same size as
the hill. Both models therefore count as Size 3 for the
purpose of LOS over Area Terrain and other models.

Nice find. Also this right here (the insanely complex terrain rules) is one of the reasons that 4th edition was so terrible. And the shoot the closest unit. So so so bad.

 xeen wrote:

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
And in a big, BIG way 7: The return of TLOS being used for everything, turning tables into shooting galleries overnight. This change really hurt the importance of maneuvering, as well as encouraged uglier tables. Forests were out, big opaque walls were in.

The change was to area terrain only - all of those ruined walls worked exactly the same way in 4th and 5th unless the players declared them as area terrain. Forests were the big affected piece of scenery as 4th used true line of sight for everything except area stuff.

IIRC by the rules as written a size 3 tank perched on top of a size 1 molehill could - by the rules - claim total concealment behind a size 2 bush. But only a sufficiently wide bush as true line of sight was still used to determine if area cover rules applied...


4e FAQ:
Q. Does an infantry model on a Size 3 hill count as size
3 or as size 5 (3+2) in regards to LOS into/over Area
Terrain and over other models? And what about a Size
3 tank on a hill?
A. The size of the hill is not added to the model’s size,
but rather the model counts as being the same size as
the hill. Both models therefore count as Size 3 for the
purpose of LOS over Area Terrain and other models.

Nice find. Also this right here (the insanely complex terrain rules) is one of the reasons that 4th edition was so terrible. And the shoot the closest unit. So so so bad.

3rd Ed. had it right in this respect. Essentially the Area Terrain rules without the complications, and no level shenanigans to botch the game.

 xeen wrote:

A.T. wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
And in a big, BIG way 7: The return of TLOS being used for everything, turning tables into shooting galleries overnight. This change really hurt the importance of maneuvering, as well as encouraged uglier tables. Forests were out, big opaque walls were in.

The change was to area terrain only - all of those ruined walls worked exactly the same way in 4th and 5th unless the players declared them as area terrain. Forests were the big affected piece of scenery as 4th used true line of sight for everything except area stuff.

IIRC by the rules as written a size 3 tank perched on top of a size 1 molehill could - by the rules - claim total concealment behind a size 2 bush. But only a sufficiently wide bush as true line of sight was still used to determine if area cover rules applied...


4e FAQ:
Q. Does an infantry model on a Size 3 hill count as size
3 or as size 5 (3+2) in regards to LOS into/over Area
Terrain and over other models? And what about a Size
3 tank on a hill?
A. The size of the hill is not added to the model’s size,
but rather the model counts as being the same size as
the hill. Both models therefore count as Size 3 for the
purpose of LOS over Area Terrain and other models.

Nice find. Also this right here (the insanely complex terrain rules) is one of the reasons that 4th edition was so terrible. And the shoot the closest unit. So so so bad.

Those rules were the last gasp at attempting to add some kind of tactical requirement to the game...

Shoot the closest unit was a great way to reflect the psychological pressures on the battlefield and the imperfect conditions of war. No general gets to point their dudes exactly where they want them and have them act perfectly every time.

Similarly the LoS and size rules reflected far better how a unit acts on the battlefield than the 'maintains bombastic shouting pose in all locations at all times' rules we've had since.

We don't have to say it was a great way to reflect that.

It seems mostly to have functioned as a [poop] coating of the concepts of fog of war or morale. We made a feeble attempt, it didn't work, therefore no further attempts should be made again.

There's definitely a version of target priority that's good and would make a better game than any edition of 40k so far. However in the minds of some people who were there, possibly xeen, the whole concept is discredited