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I played 2nd to 6th.

transition to 3rd was a massive improvement but 4th is still my favorite.
It was a little bland fluff wise, but imo still has the best game mechanics:

fast, furious & fun

5th didn't really add much for me and whatever 6th gained on the fluff front in lost in so many other respects.

 Frank&Stein wrote:
I played 2nd to 6th.

transition to 3rd was a massive improvement but 4th is still my favorite.
It was a little bland fluff wise, but imo still has the best game mechanics:

fast, furious & fun

5th didn't really add much for me and whatever 6th gained on the fluff front in lost in so many other respects.

Lol, were you by chance playing a Pacman CSM army? Nom nom nom... 1st turn charge and consolidate into combat, rinse, wash, repeat.

 Robbiedbee wrote:
I voted 3rd, simply because that's the system I had the most games with, and truthfully, the most fun. Granted, that could have been because I was a lot younger and went at the hobby with much greater enthusiasm and naivety. I started with 2nd edition, and the transition to 3rd made everything so much easier.

I do like 6th though, it has it's flaws, but don't they all?

I also liked 3rd. Psykers were nerfed into oblivious, which was nice because i didnt like psykers.
It seemed there was some balance for a while and less silly combos.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I love the inevitable forward progression of 40k. I like that the rules get better with each passing edition. 6th edition is, in my opinion, the best so far. I started in 3rd edition, if it matters.

Totally agree, the game is more fun to play now and has got increasingly so. Maybe it just seems like that when a new edition gets released but it works for me! I've played since rogue trader and I still love to read the rule book but no way would I ever be bothered playing a game even for nostalgia. Reforming and continuing to reform....

My 2nd least favorite was 3rd, just because my own army was so OP. Between 2nd and 3rd, I grew to really hate OP codices.

Definitely 6th!

Started in 2nd got serious in 3rd played all since then. All had their flaws even the current one. But sixth has the most to offer in my oppinion. So I vote sixth even though I am currently getting my butt handed to me regularly. Can't wait till the new Ork dex.

I started in 1st edition, which was riddled with millions of D100 random charts. Though i did like some of the RPG elements. Second edition is rightfully called "Herohammer". It was like playing "the Illiad", where your hero would slay squads at a time...and each turn took foreeeeevvveeerrr, but it had character! When i got into 3rd edition, i was so underwhelmed i stopped playing until i got back into 6th edition. 6th is by far my favorite, even from what ive learned of 4th snd 5th. I like the allies matrix. I like the new psychic powers and power weapons. However, i do HATE flyers!

Playing since RT, 6th is my favorite

 Zagman wrote:

 Frank&Stein wrote:
I played 2nd to 6th.

transition to 3rd was a massive improvement but 4th is still my favorite.
It was a little bland fluff wise, but imo still has the best game mechanics:

fast, furious & fun

5th didn't really add much for me and whatever 6th gained on the fluff front in lost in so many other respects.

Lol, were you by chance playing a Pacman CSM army? Nom nom nom... 1st turn charge and consolidate into combat, rinse, wash, repeat.

SM and IG gunlines actually, and quite succesfully too.
Most people at my FLGS played assault heavy armies, but I always found that proper unit positioning and target selection went a long way in countering that tactic.

I've always been a gunline type player, so you would think I'd love 6th edition.
But I've always liked the fact that playing a gunline was in fact a challenge and it's just too easy now. Plus all the randomness just killed any sense of tactical gameplay.

Ive played them all from rogue trader to today. I actually like 2 editions. Rogue trader from nostalgia and the fact that back then it was all for fun (no tourneys) without the WAAC you have had in later editions.
Likewise, I like the current as it is the most balanced and fair edition to date while still allowing fun.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I love the inevitable forward progression of 40k. I like that the rules get better with each passing edition. 6th edition is, in my opinion, the best so far. I started in 3rd edition, if it matters.

You play tau the most shooty army in the most shoot edition.Well you have a good reason.

Martel732 wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Maenus_Rajhana wrote:
I still greatly miss my 2nd, but 6th is the best I've seen since those lost days of yore.

I haven't played a ton of games under 6th Edition Rules, but it seems like it is at least inching back towards the greatness of 40K's best edition (2nd), while avoiding some of the balance and play-flow issues that the early days had.

I'd still take 2nd Edition though. While it wasn't perfect, the rules were far better suited to a sci-fi wargame than anything since then. If they'd kept 2nd's mechanics for movement, shooting, overwatch, etc, and worked in 3rd Edition's hand to hand and psychics, we'd have a much better game. Instead, 3rd Edition tried to be "Wargaming For Dummies", and focused on quick game resolution via giant melees, and artificially increasing the number of models you could play with by lowering the points. And 40K has never recovered, lol.

The only thing great about 2nd was the amount of fighting and model throwing it generated. By far the worst of all the editions.

The great thing about the Internet is that it's 100% okay for you to be wrong.

Nobody who actually played 2nd Edition would have such poor memories of it. It was a bloated mess that took a long time to play, and it wasn't perfect. But if you played with crappy people then, and you played with crappy people now, there would be no difference.

I played it quite a bit. It was horrible.

2nd, by quite a long way.

It had its issues and it was far from balanced but it had a depth of gameplay that has been absent from 40K since 3rd ed was spawned.


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Martel732 wrote:
I played it quite a bit. I was horrible.

Freudian?

I like the 1st and 2nd a lot but the 6th with some tweaking for my friend and I is the favored.

 Palindrome wrote:
2nd, by quite a long way.

It had its issues and it was far from balanced but it had a depth of gameplay that has been absent from 40K since 3rd ed was spawned.


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Martel732 wrote:
I played it quite a bit. I was horrible.

Freudian?

Maybe, but if you weren't Tyranids, CSM, or Eldar there was no reason to show up.

I did well with my IG infantry army., I actually remember being more irritated by balance issues with 3rd Ed.

I wonder how many people voting for 6th actually played many prior editions?

I rarely saw IG because of virus grenades. At least Orks had the vaccine squig.

I have really fond memories of 2nd ed. That was just so much fun. It was the first minis game i ever played, and just today my friend and i were building a new gaming table (specifically for 40k!), and reminiscing about it.

Other than that, i do really like 6th quite a bit.

Full disclosure, i barely played 4th (3 games?) and didn't play 5th at all before getting back into the game.

 Palindrome wrote:
I did well with my IG infantry army., I actually remember being more irritated by balance issues with 3rd Ed.

I wonder how many people voting for 6th actually played many prior editions?

I have played each and every edition from Rogue Trader to present. I like 6th because of the balance it has brought to where all playstyles have a good chance of winning (read as you don't have to show up at a tourney with an all close combat army to win but now any style has a chance). Dislike allies in tournaments and think they not have "battle brothers" even in for fun games.

My favorite games. The ones we tell stories about in our groups bull sessions and reminisce, are usually Rogue Trader games. That was my favorite edition for nostalgia reasons. Every game was just for fun (we made up out own scenarios and stuff), we were young and learning to wargame and did not have to deal with outsiders or jerks. Heck, our terrain consisted of stacked paperback novels, cassette tape cases and matchbox cars, but we didn't care, we were having fun.

I started with 2nd and probably played the most of 3rd. I sorta dropped out of the hobby over most of 4th and got back in near the end of 5th.

I like 6th ed, it has sorta refreshed the game for me.

But being able to put 20 Khorne Bezerkers in a Rhino and assault out of the front of it is what makes me love 3rd the best.

Martel732 wrote:
I rarely saw IG because of virus grenades.

2nd was very open to rules and equipment abuse, much more than the editions that followed.
But I feel this has always been more of a problem in pick-up games than within steady gaming groups.
I guess how fondly you remember 2nd (and other editions) depends greatly on your meta.

I've played from the very end of 3rd through 6th.

5th ed gets my vote.

The reason is because the progression from third to fourth to fifth was a process of slowly perfecting a certain game that they were trying to make. And, with a few exceptions, like wound wrapping, they more or less succeeded.

Then 6th came along and tried to reinvent the game. Or, as other people have mentioned, they tried to bring back old rules to create a new kind of game based on the synthesis. Mostly, the game has tried to recapture its skirmish roots (like by putting a huge emphasis on models and seriously downplaying units).

... But. Firstly, 6th edition suffers from the fact that, unlike in 2nd ed, you now have hundreds of models on the board thanks to the slow points deflation over the decades. A skirmish system is inappropriate for this scale, and a lot of people's complaints about 6th ed can really be boiled down to this. 6th is okay if you play 500 point games, like the rules intend, but it isn't if you play 1500-2500 point games like GW's sales department wants you to.

The second problem is that, in branching off in a new direction from their previous refinement of their old direction, they have naturally, because it's new, haven't gotten it right. Allies and new cover saves and wounding rules and all this other stuff has wound up being rather glitchy and not as well thought out as they originally thought it was.

In a way, 5th edition is like windows XP and 6th edition is like windows Vista. The XP-style way of doing things was around for a long time, and they had done a decent job of fixing the bugs from NT to 2k. The end result, while not perfect, was pretty decent, and wore well. Vista then came in and tried to do a bunch of new stuff in a bunch of new ways, and it was a disaster. So much so that it took a few years and a lot of work fixing the mess until you got something that resembled what you wanted in the first place.

My guess is that 7th will be a refinement of 6th, like 5th was a refinement of 4th which was a refinement of 3rd.

Maybe then we'll get a game that isn't about min-maxing elite units with long range firepower, but who knows...

Started in 2nd, my favourites were 5th and 3rd. I haven't played 6th so I can't comment on it except to say the rules seem over complicated in places.
3rd changed the game from a fairly hero-orientated skirmish into more of a streamlined squad based game. The change to the phases was the biggest change the game has seen and it was a good change. The new save system was and is flawed, but the new rules for assault were much better. It had it's flaws and broke down pretty badly in later years (especially after chaos 3.5 was released and Daemonbomb became so popular!) but it was also when some of the defining plastics for 40K were coming out. It was a good time.
5th was a bit dumb in some ways and the parking lots of late 5th were fairly boring, but it had a lot to recommend it as well. I played a lot of 5th edition and enjoyed it all a lot.

4th was my least favourite edition mostly because I spent pretty much the entire edition waiting for a book update for Orks to make them fun to play again.

Martel732 wrote:

 Palindrome wrote:
2nd, by quite a long way.

It had its issues and it was far from balanced but it had a depth of gameplay that has been absent from 40K since 3rd ed was spawned.


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Martel732 wrote:
I played it quite a bit. I was horrible.

Freudian?

Maybe, but if you weren't Tyranids, CSM, or Eldar there was no reason to show up.

That's funny, my Imperial Guard probably had a winrate of ~70%. Nids were a regular opponent too.

2nd was awesome, 3rd made me quit 40K. 6th is a pretty good balance IMO and I'm enjoying playing again.

Martel732 wrote:
At least Orks had the vaccine squig.

Never leave home without it

I played a small Blood Axe warband with the actual metal Blood Axe models with some mad boyz, a mek, painboy some grots and a splata cannon.

Good times

I don't think I ever won game but I ALWAYS had fun.

ive been playing since mid of 4th, but i would say 6th is my favorite as it is the most realistic of the editions.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Maenus_Rajhana wrote:
I still greatly miss my 2nd, but 6th is the best I've seen since those lost days of yore.

I haven't played a ton of games under 6th Edition Rules, but it seems like it is at least inching back towards the greatness of 40K's best edition (2nd), while avoiding some of the balance and play-flow issues that the early days had.

I'd still take 2nd Edition though. While it wasn't perfect, the rules were far better suited to a sci-fi wargame than anything since then. If they'd kept 2nd's mechanics for movement, shooting, overwatch, etc, and worked in 3rd Edition's hand to hand and psychics, we'd have a much better game. Instead, 3rd Edition tried to be "Wargaming For Dummies", and focused on quick game resolution via giant melees, and artificially increasing the number of models you could play with by lowering the points. And 40K has never recovered, lol.

This is pretty much the thinking of anyone who grew up in the glory days of 2nd Ed. Yes it had flaws, but rather than fix them GW threw everything that was good out the window and gave us the POS that was 3rd Ed. Since then they've gradually been adding detail back to the game and each edition has gotten a little better than the last, but it will still never be as good as 2nd Ed until they bring back to-hit and save modifiers.
The worst 2 things about Editions 3-6 are:
1) AP level being an all or nothing affair where an anti-tank missile has no effect what-so-ever on terminator armour, but an anti-tank laser (lascannon which is only one point better) makes it like the guy has no armour at all. It's too simple and it's a crap mechanic
2) Cover being a save instead of effecting your chance to hit. It means that either your armour or your cover becomes irrelevant in any given situation, which is stupid. Take for instance a unit of guard shooting at a unit of space marines. Can the lasgun kill a space marine? yes. Would the space marine's chance of survival be increased by taking cover behind a wall? Yes - but not in this game... so why not?

No other edition has as much retro-edition support from players. People deliberately choose to go back to 2nd Ed. Anyone else playing an old edition just hasn't updated yet

Codex Eldar, CSM, and Tyranids were enough to make me never want to see 2nd edition ever again. Any "glory" in the 2nd edition rules were totally swept away by these three books.