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.

So I've heard enough about 7th already to know I'm not interested in GW having my money for 7th. Sorry, but I'm officially done.

Because people will get on my back about this, here's the trick: I like 40K. I don't like Games Workshop.

But that's not what this thread is about. Before the white knights come in proclaiming my manifest evilness against the infallible Gee Dubs, I want to know if 3rd or 4th are worth going back to - and, most importantly, how one could go about introducing a gaming group to these games.

Ok, so 3rd and 4th. What's good and bad, and are they worth getting into over 5th? Obviously there are places I can go online to get the older books to play, so that's not really an issue...

In short, are they worth getting people into over 5th, and would I need any additional material - I know 2nd needed certain cards and stuff.

Thanks all in advance.

Started in 3rd edition and retrospectively it was probably the worst 40k had to offer. 4th was an improvement but overall not much better.

Honestly I don't see what people expect? Every edition had it's game breaking lists. If you go back to 3rd you will complain about BA rhino rush or the seeding swarm.

Don't let the internet mass hysterics get to you.

3rd? Real men play RT.

Depends on how much you like melee? 3rd was awesome for melee beasts. 2 armies mounted up for a fast paced assault fest.

There's a thing called "one page 40k", where the simplified the rules down to 1 page. I haven't tried it, but you might consider it.

Every edition of 40k has problems. They fix some, break others. 3rd is also hard to quantify, as it was a moving target. Those were the days when we were getting new rules, units, and armies in White Dwarf. And while we did get the cosmic reset button with all the army lists in the core book, once codexes started coming out there was a lot of codex creep. Where not only was there a divide between armies that had received their book, but the later books were almost always better then the earlier books.

If you and your group dislike the current edition, sit down and talk about what you do want. The old ones are not necessarily better. And if you are going to start tweaking and homebrewing, I might use one of the more modern versions as a base.

 Exergy wrote:
Depends on how much you like melee? 3rd was awesome for melee beasts. 2 armies mounted up for a fast paced assault fest.

Yeah, but aspirations towards melee in the 3rd were very low. A chapter master with WS5 and 4 power sword attacks was one of the stronger choices.

I don't see how it could be every worth it to go back to 3rd or 4th. The money, time and energy to convince your buddies to play 3rd or 4th and get all necessary materials (if you don't want to pirate them) is better invested in applying some house rules to the 7th, if you feel bothered about some elements like unbound or allies or detachments.

5th was better than 3rd.

I wouldn't like to play 3rd. Rhino rush puts me off a lot.

I've played since RT and 3rd was by far my least favorite. I actually liked 6th. (It just had a lot of codex balance issues.) But yeah, I'm sitting 7th out.

Pretty much all the 40k players at our club have migrated to 2nd edition. In comparison to the modern game it's ridiculously cheap to get into- the games are much smaller and the books are hardly anything on ebay.
We feel the same as you. We all love 40k, but preferred it when gamers ran GW.
Havig said that,I do have a soft spot for 3rd too. A very simple, fun game, especially if you stick to the army lists in the back of the rule book.

I was aware that every edition had it's problems, I was just interested in knowing where they lay with earlier editions.

We're all more or less casual gamers here, but none of us want to dump money on 7th. We're all familiar with 6th and know 5th well enough, but none of us are too familiar with anything earlier. Hence the thread.

People saying "You might as well play 7th" are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard, or a Carnifex - well, a Carnifex.

I think 6th with some refinement could have been great.

Problem with 2nd is that most modern stuff (including entire armies, and no I don't mean Imperial Knights - I mean Tau and Necrons) would be unplayable, and that might force out some players. I'd recommend staying with 6th until you feel the need to update - Some folks in my LGS kept playing 5th and, in retrospect, it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.
3rd took away all options, character (not characters) and anything else I found interesting and kind of made a "Generichammer." It was a simple, fast game that accommodated larger battles.

 MWHistorian wrote:
It was a simple, fast game that accommodated larger battles.

The third edition was probably the worst concerning internal balance of codices. Anything that was able to move over 6" was horribly overcosted and generally people didn't bother with half of their respective codices. Not because there was a OP unit (the relative strength of a unit was comparably tame back then) that got spammed but because there was so much junk no one bothered with.

There's a second edition wave going on at my FLGS. It's about a 50 / 50 split between people who love 6th edition and people who hate it.

You can probably guess what armies each side runs.

Honestly, with all this talk about openness in the new edition and being able to take what you want, it really sucks that half the models are still impractical on the table. Not being able to assault out of a Rhino really puts a damper on things.

 Darkseid wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
It was a simple, fast game that accommodated larger battles.

The third edition was probably the worst concerning internal balance of codices. Anything that was able to move over 6" was horribly overcosted and generally people didn't bother with half of their respective codices. Not because there was a OP unit (the relative strength of a unit was comparably tame back then) that got spammed but because there was so much junk no one bothered with.

Agreed. I didn't like 3rd at all and after a few games I sat out on 3rd.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
I was aware that every edition had it's problems, I was just interested in knowing where they lay with earlier editions.

We're all more or less casual gamers here, but none of us want to dump money on 7th. We're all familiar with 6th and know 5th well enough, but none of us are too familiar with anything earlier. Hence the thread.

People saying "You might as well play 7th" are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard, or a Carnifex - well, a Carnifex.

Pshah, the Carnifex will have its revenge.

Third was (for me) all about:

- Rhino rush Marines and CSM
- Star cannon spam
- Iron Warriors pounding armies off the tabletop with impunity
- Running a Mutable Tyranid build and wishing that I could use some of the cooler units but not being able to because spam was so effective
- Sweeping Advance into combat was too powerful
- Insane Codex creep (looking at you, Tyranids, CSM 3.5 and Blood Angels)

Interestingly, not much has really changed from the above other than some of the names. Given that the internet wasn't what it is today back then, I dread to think what we would be saying if 3rd were released at the end of its lifecycle tomorrow.

That said, if you pick up 3rd and play with the armies in the BBB only, you might be pleasantly surprised as they were all fairly tame. Not balanced (very much not in fact), but rather everything was slow and fairly easy to counter because of that.

MadmanMSU wrote:
There's a thing called "one page 40k", where the simplified the rules down to 1 page. I haven't tried it, but you might consider it.

It's good. Fast to learn, fast to play, balanced, and you can use melee.

I am currently gearing up to play games of 4th edition with my couple of close friends who are interested in 40K. I have nearly everything from the era just after 4th dropped, so it allows me to keep using all the great stuff I have ALREADY spent hard-earned money on.

Also, I am the owner of the only skimmer army (Eldar) that will take the field, and I do not spam them, so that particular problem from 4th is avoided.

Of course, I also own one of the nifty "Battle Bibles" available online, which collects all the rules and codex stats for everything in 2nd edition into one large document (even Sisters, Squats and the available Necrons of the time). So I am eager to get back to the days of the edition that was out when I first got into the game, and play some skirmish-level 40K again instead of giant armies.

 liquidjoshi wrote:
So I've heard enough about 7th already to know I'm not interested in GW having my money for 7th. Sorry, but I'm officially done.

Because people will get on my back about this, here's the trick: I like 40K. I don't like Games Workshop.

But that's not what this thread is about. Before the white knights come in proclaiming my manifest evilness against the infallible Gee Dubs, I want to know if 3rd or 4th are worth going back to - and, most importantly, how one could go about introducing a gaming group to these games.

Ok, so 3rd and 4th. What's good and bad, and are they worth getting into over 5th? Obviously there are places I can go online to get the older books to play, so that's not really an issue...

In short, are they worth getting people into over 5th, and would I need any additional material - I know 2nd needed certain cards and stuff.

Thanks all in advance.

3rd is probably best avoided. If you thought 6th was broken for shooting, it is nothing compared to how over the top brokenly all powerful assault was in 3rd. If you ever shot at all other than an initial round of fire, the Ork, Nid, Blood Angel, BT, Space Wolf player was doing something really really really wrong. Super duper sweeping advances that could potentially carry assault marines the entire length of a 6 foot board.

3rd with the Trial Assault rules fixed a lot of that, but flat 3rd? Avoid it like the plague (even after building a Black Templar army I would not play without the TAR, as it was just to stupidly easy with 0 tactics ever as an assault army, you didn't even need to prioritize what you assaulted. Rhino rush 12", then 2" disembark, then 6" assault. Yay for 20" assaults, that were even farther with turbo boosts or speed freak lists. Coupled with smoke launchers forcing everything to glancing, you had what amounted to almost invulnerable delivery vehicles disgorging a horde of cc specialists that could almost sit outside your range before disgorging into combat and annihilating everything if they got the charge off).

4th, yeah, maybe with some codex tweaks/fixes.

 Darkseid wrote:
Started in 3rd edition and retrospectively it was probably the worst 40k had to offer. 4th was an improvement but overall not much better.

Honestly I don't see what people expect? Every edition had it's game breaking lists. If you go back to 3rd you will complain about BA rhino rush or the seeding swarm.

Don't let the internet mass hysterics get to you.

QFT


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I think 6th with some refinement could have been great.

If you ignore the FOC... they have that, called 7th.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

Wait...what? Speaking of assumptions.
I played the crap out of RT and 2nd.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
Yeah, the likelihood is that most of us will stick with 6th or possibly go back to 5th. I'm simply interested in what the earlier editions had to offer. 2nd and RT were far closer to skirmish games as far as I understand it.

RT was a mess and more like RPG rules.
2nd was "Hero Hammer" and the characters were a much bigger part of the game.

Spoken like someone who wasn't old enough to play either and bases all of his assumptions off of hearsay

Wait...what? Speaking of assumptions.
I played the crap out of RT and 2nd.

Yeah RT was a complete mess... fun but just off the wall (though I do miss the old RT/2nd save system).

Play 5th ed and bring in a few changes 6th (and the clarifications from 7th) and you'd be golden.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
3rd? Real men play RT.

Real Men play second edition. Rogue Trader is sooo dated/semi-unplayable.

7th Edition inspired me to permanently shelve my GK and get to work on a Genestealer Cult army. And it's a good thing too- Genestealer Cults are really piking awesome.

 Mysterious Pants wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
3rd? Real men play RT.

Real Men play second edition. Rogue Trader is sooo dated/semi-unplayable.

7th Edition inspired me to permanently shelve my GK and get to work on a Genestealer Cult army. And it's a good thing too- Genestealer Cults are really piking awesome.

Real men and women play apocalypse sized games using FFG RPG rules.