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At our recent club meeting I ran a game of 2nd edition 40k. A brief battle report along with my thoughts on the system and how it compares to my favored rulesets on our club's blog.

http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2011/11/vintage-warhammer-40k-2nd-edition.html
As always the pics blow up nicely, so feel free to click and enjoy the grim-darkness up close!

I realize there is an AAR section of dakka, but as the blog will show, this posting is really more about my feelings regarding 2nd edition. The long and short of it is that I enjoyed the game, but despite my nostalgia, it was very quickly apparent why later versions of 40k have streamlined many of the game mechanics.

Here's a couple of teaser shots.

You should allow some vehicles though i don't like the rules for bikes.

I can see the sense in limiting the cards available from the Dark Millennium set as some are a bit broken. The virus grenade can wipe out horde armies like Orks in a turn...

If we try this again we will probably use a vehicle or two per side. Even with the somewhat clunky vehicle rules, they are one of the things that is an improvements over the vehicle rules in Warengine where the vehicle rules are just too simple.

As to the virus grenade, it's a great example of a bit of wacky RT'ish wargear that would be great to base a scenario around. A good use might be stop the orks from setting of the virus bomb, or having a virus grenade go off at a randomly generated turn. However, it has no place being a chosable piece of wargear for a regular game.

2nd Ed is great, have been dipping in and out of it for ages. Add a sprinkling of R/T goodness and all is fine. I agree with Howard about some of the cards, but overall I prefer the mechanics of the game (but not the close combat stuff so much) to the current edition.

I still feel 2nd Edition was the best of them all, and starting with 3rd, the game got away from Sci-Fi to become Fantasy In Space.

You covered some things, but this has been my feelings on it, somewhat dusty with the passage of time.

Pros to 2nd:
Shooting works, and was viable for almost every army.
Overwatch fire forces more tactical movement.
Just felt like it had more flavor. Armies had more unique weapons. Orks especially.

Cons to 2nd:
Psychic phase added a ton of time to a game. Most games I played had the agreed rule of no psykers.
Games already took forever.
Some weapons could horribly unbalance it if they weren't agreed out beforehand.

Pros to 3rd+:
Streamlined. Games can be resolved quickly.
Psykers were usable

Cons to 3rd+:
Hand to Hand focus. I played Fantasy. Kinda liked my sci-fi with more guns and less swords. This was a pretty crucial downturn to the game. The focus was obviously on a quicker pace, and nothing ends quicker than a gigantic melee.
Dice rolling exercise feel. Place models. Move at eachother (or don't). Roll dice. Remove models.
More models. I know the points difference is somewhat superficial (30 point Marines vs 15 point Marines just means 2000 point games vs 1000 point games), but they cleverly reduced the point costs overall to cram more figures on the table. Which of course, is more money. But the more models just meant more dice rolling, not more complex strategies and tactics.

I've kinda hoped for a long time that the game would steer back in the right direction, but at this point, there are a lot of armies that might not survive a shooting oriented game.

Wow, this sounds pretty cool, I might try and create a scenario that utilises the 'Overwatch' idea! Perhaps with a kill team theme...

Veteran Sergeant wrote:
I've kinda hoped for a long time that the game would steer back in the right direction, but at this point, there are a lot of armies that might not survive a shooting oriented game.

Shooting is still a very valid strategy for several armies, though not all. Tau, SoB, Guard, and Necron all avoid CC like the plague. Most Eldar builds favor shooting over assault, though they can go melee focused. Given the increasing importance of mechanization for most armies I would say that they are moving away from the fantastic as much as the melee is pulling towards.

I definitely resonate with folks looking for more emphasis on shooting and some kind of overwatch or reserved action mechanic.

Since I've stopped playing 40k I've tried a number of systems that I've really enjoyed (WarEngine, Tomorrow's War, etc) and most of them have an overwatch or "reaction" mechanism. It adds so much to the game that not having one now seems to me to be a major shortcoming.

Even IGOUGO (as opposed to alternating unit activation) is bearable with an overwatch/reaction mechanic.

Armless Failure wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:I've kinda hoped for a long time that the game would steer back in the right direction, but at this point, there are a lot of armies that might not survive a shooting oriented game.

Shooting is still a very valid strategy for several armies, though not all. Tau, SoB, Guard, and Necron all avoid CC like the plague. Most Eldar builds favor shooting over assault, though they can go melee focused. Given the increasing importance of mechanization for most armies I would say that they are moving away from the fantastic as much as the melee is pulling towards.

I don't know if your experience dates back to 2nd edition, but "shooting oriented game" means more than just the fact that the army's focus is on ranged weapons. The rules were much more shooting-centric as well. Armies like Tau would love 2nd edition, if they were old enough to have had a list for it, lol. As far as the "not survive" part, I just mean the fact that 2nd had far shorter movement distances, and weapons had armor save modifiers instead of AP values which hurts more heavily armored troops (though, some models did have pretty burly saves like the 3+ on 2d6 for things like Terminators and Carnifexes, lol).

Now I'm not saying I want a full return to 2E, because like I said, it has some problems, but a return to rules that make the model with a rifle a force on the battlefield rather than the dude hiding behind it hoping not to get hit with a glowing or buzzing stick would radically alter the game, and flip some army lists on their heads.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Cons to 3rd+:
Hand to Hand focus. I played Fantasy. Kinda liked my sci-fi with more guns and less swords. This was a pretty crucial downturn to the game. The focus was obviously on a quicker pace, and nothing ends quicker than a gigantic melee.
[...]
I've kinda hoped for a long time that the game would steer back in the right direction, but at this point, there are a lot of armies that might not survive a shooting oriented game.

...I'm not convinced we're playing the same game . I don't think I've ever heard anyone say 40k has a "Hand to Hand focus" beyond 4e: 5th was notoriously known for assault being nearly useless barring some very particular units, and even currently, the only armies that really assault are ones which can teleport in and charge immediately or those which are nigh invincible. Likewise, melees in 40k are anything but quick from my experience - it wouldn't be the first time that a second turn charge locked units in combat for the entire duration of the game...

Oooo, clobbered by a cunning necro from 2011!

Eyjio wrote:
...I'm not convinced we're playing the same game . I don't think I've ever heard anyone say 40k has a "Hand to Hand focus" beyond 4e: 5th was notoriously known for assault being nearly useless barring some very particular units, and even currently, the only armies that really assault are ones which can teleport in and charge immediately or those which are nigh invincible. Likewise, melees in 40k are anything but quick from my experience - it wouldn't be the first time that a second turn charge locked units in combat for the entire duration of the game...

One thing I notice while reading these rules conversations is that competitive and pick-up play is very different from casual play. I don't think I've ever played a game that involved lots of shooting. All games end in a mash of close combat as armies fight to the death. My conclusion from this is that the rules themselves are not biased against or towards shooting, but the meta of different armies in general play tips the balance towards shooting as people find that their guns are better than their swords. The rules work absolutely fine for me and my friends, and we have quite balanced games that involve a little bit of everything. I also noticed this when people were saying that terminators are terrible these days. My experience of terminators is that they are amazing and always have been! In fact, I just painted 10 more for my imperial forces in order to use more of them in battle! My meta obviously doesn't involve whatever it is that nerfs terminators (we certainly have never seen a grav gun), and so my experience of the game is vastly different from that of other people.

I hope this doesn't come across as a criticism of you in particular (I hope it doesn't come across as criticism at all!). It's just your post reminded me of this thing that I have noticed while reading various discussions on dakka.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 zedmeister wrote:
Oooo, clobbered by a cunning necro from 2011!

I think this might be a good thread to necro actually, given the discussions going on in the 'AoSing of 40k' thread. It might help provide perspective and remind people of what 2nd ed was like.