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While 5E had it's issues, it's the closest they've gotten to a good, clean game. The Grey Knights were not designed for a 5E style, but the 6E style. It showed that they were still a great book during 6E, but they kicked down all the doors in 5E. Prior to the Grey Knights, there was still a lot of mech spam, but it felt like what the game was given the scale.

I feel like had they stayed on course with 5E and gotten back to supporting tournaments, they'd have been a lot better for it. I started off hesitant, then liking, then loathing allies. It's dumb, get rid of them. Powers have gotten too powerful and too random; they should go back to being purchased by points.

I'm glad to see that so many people are wanting back that 5E (and the same flavor, 4E) versus the new stuff we have.

Given the fondness for 5th, I'm wondering if 5th would be a good, easy basis for some small modifications to make a "tolerable for all" 40k. Some balance tweaks here, a systems change there etc.

 Yonan wrote:
Given the fondness for 5th, I'm wondering if 5th would be a good, easy basis for some small modifications to make a "tolerable for all" 40k. Some balance tweaks here, a systems change there etc.

Wasn't that "pancake" edition?

I came in on the tail of 5th so I don't know too much about it other than "mech spam" was heavily favoured. I do know that everyone around here preferred it to 6th and no one is playing 7th though hehe.

 Yonan wrote:
I came in on the tail of 5th so I don't know too much about it other than "mech spam" was heavily favoured. I do know that everyone around here preferred it to 6th and no one is playing 7th though hehe.

"Leafblower" guard were a thing (tons of tanks and Vendettas), Long Fang spam (when missiles were scary!), and even Blood Angels were backend tighteners. Eldar and Tau were tepid, but Dark Eldar and Crons were good, too. It was probably the closest I've felt that I could pick up any army and do well with it versus that of 6E and later. One of our top placing gents in the very last 'Ard Boyz did so with the FAQ'd Dark Angels (they got proper Stormshields). He was dirty with them, never beat him with my missile/plasma wolves.

Nids were still a little borked, but they had assault after arrival, which made certain units very scary. Fleet hormaguants could also do some hurt and the "crapping dudes for days" was also fearful.

I dunno, rules were simpler, there wasn't all the fake "Forge the Narrative" stuff like challenges, and we could play 2500pt games in 2.5 hours easy. The game was just less complex.

2nd edition while not the most balanced is still my favorite because that's what I started on.

Oh Glorious Virus Grenade, how I miss you.

Those sound like some relatively simple balance changes. New guard codex fixes most guard problems I'd say (especially vendetta), long fangs get a points increase in some respect, Eldar and Tau could use new dexes too with some toning down. A modified hull points could help reduce the prevalance of mech overall and so on. Just for some rough ideas.

I know we're talking house rules here, but just wondering if it would be the best way to get fun 40k happening using it as a basis rather than just defaulting to modifying the latest edition.

 Yonan wrote:
Those sound like some relatively simple balance changes. New guard codex fixes most guard problems I'd say (especially vendetta), long fangs get a points increase in some respect, Eldar and Tau could use new dexes too with some toning down. A modified hull points could help reduce the prevalance of mech overall and so on. Just for some rough ideas.

I know we're talking house rules here, but just wondering if it would be the best way to get fun 40k happening using it as a basis rather than just defaulting to modifying the latest edition.

Things like "Jink" saves didn't exist. Cover was better. You could assault from reserves. NO FLYERS OR FLYING MONSTERS! It was a magical time. Fleet meant you go into combat incredibly fast. Wound allocation would need to be tweaked, as that's what gave the Grey Knights their tricks. You could simply have it that players got to choose to place wounds and on models with multiple wounds, you had to stack them until a model was removed and then move onto the next one.

I voted for 6thend. Despite toning down vehicles. I liked the way Psychic powers worked best in that edition. PlusI like throwing the occasional grenade.

I guess I did speak too soon. However, I did admit that we had much too small of a sampling size to get any kind of consensus at that point. I am still even surprised at 18-20% for 7th. In my local group, I know it would be much higher but on the interwebz, I figured it would be around 10%. That's about the % of people I haven't seen complaining about 7th being a broken pile of trash.

Toofast wrote:
I figured it would be around 10%. That's about the % of people I haven't seen complaining about 7th being a broken pile of trash.

There are more of us, many of whom have abandoned forums like this due to the extremely vocal minority who will rubbish everything constantly. The same people who rubbished 6E are still around to rubbish 7E.

2nd. Love 2nd. The bright miniatures, the fresh aesthetic, the awesome.

Favorite era? That is tough to narrow down by single edition of the rules.

I mean, 3rd & 4th ed GW was still doing a lot of things right like summer campaigns, tournament prize support, bitz service and steadily improving rules.

GW stopped most of that by or during 5th ed. But 5th, arguably, had the best core rules out of all of the editions. The rules were stream-lined, which allowed for fast games.

3rd and 4th ed rules had some real issues like conflicting rules between terrain and area terrain. The abstracted terrain levels vs los rules created in game arguments that were the reason for GW rightly moving to tlos in 5th ed.(In 4th an opponent could walk right up to a solid 2+ story wall and flamer your models because of the default area terrain rules)
Also, 4th's vehicle damage table made anything not av 14 just perish too easily. There were other issues that slowed the game down but I'll leave off here.


The only faults with the 5th ed core rules were the wound allocation system, coversaves that were 1 point to good, limited mission selection/scope and overly simplistic victory conditions(Kill Points).

5th ed.'s minor issues would have been fixed by:
a)switching to 4th eds wound allocation,
b)dropping cover from 4+ or less every where to 5+ or less (or just do away with cover saves in favor of to hit modifiers)
c) expanded mission & deployment choices
and
d)A return to the pre-5th ed Victory Points system or something like the NOVA rules that were developed to fix 5th's KP problem.

Any major flaws in 5th edition were introduced via codex.

5th ed became vehicle heavy because GW focused on Imperial factions and dropped vehicle costs in those books. Rhinos dropping from 60-ish pts to 35-ish pts, IG vehicle squadron rules and 25% points reduction on the Chimeras "created" the vehicle heavy meta for 5th ed.

The later part of 5th ed saw dramatic power escalation in the codices as they were being written to overcome the super cheap vehicles and also with an eye towards the approaching over powered mess that was to be 6th ed.

So, which is it? 3rd and 4th where GW were still actively involved with building and maintaining the 40k player community? or is it 5th where GW stopped providing any real after sales product support but did have its best core rule set?

I voted 5th because of the rules and that the community was still strong, despite GW abdicating their community leader position via cost cutting (profit margin) decision. 4th was probably the best overal time for the community though.

Later,
ff

Yeah 5th ed would really benefit from a objective system rather than just KP, though prefer wound allocations from 6/7th, having to actually think about model placement etc.

Then again, bit biased as I think Tac objectives and forcing people to adopt new strategies every turn (Rather than just Stand. Shoot.) is the best thing since sliced bread.

I voted 7th, of course there are rules I dislike in it, but far less than other editions. As for the openness of the army selection I've yet to encounter a issue.

I've started playing in 5-th and haven't played earlier editions, so won't vote. But can definitely tell that out of 5, 6,7 the 6-th was the worst one. I liked 5-th for footslogging hoards but vehicle spam was a bit over the top and there were such insane codexes like space wolves, blood angels that felt like C: SM +1. And GK that were over the top either. But as apeared, it was way better than 6-th ed stuff like eldar and tau.

7-th ed is basically the same as 6-th but the great thing that happened is maelstorm missions. SDomeone argues that they're random and bad but they really do inspire to play the mission other than "run around for 5 turns and than turboboost 48' to get the points" and "ignore movement phase, sit there and shoot stuff to death" approach so common in 5 and 6.

Wow can't believe how popular 5th is. I dont know anything about it as I never bought the set, and was on 40k hiatus during that time.

KTG17 wrote:
Wow can't believe how popular 5th is. I dont know anything about it as I never bought the set, and was on 40k hiatus during that time.

Like people have said, 5th was the edition that came closer to truly offer a balanced play experience and as such was the edition that was most friendly to PUGs and tournament games alike.

It probably also helps that since it was the edition released before the clusterfeth that are 6th and 7th, some people might also be a bit influenced by nostalgia of a time where the game wasn't just completely unfun to play.

I have to say it's a cross between 5th and 7th. I think my most memorable games were during 5th Edition, but I also think that that was largely due to my FLGS having an awesome league organizer who came up with crazy, interesting missions each week to simulate how actual battles would take place, such as both sides fighting in a dense fog/mist, or a column of tanks being ambushed by the enemy.

Honestly, I think 6th/7th have a great balance of making things a little deadlier and a little less survivable, which makes the game much more fun and interesting. One issue I had with 5th, looking back, is that vehicles were nigh-on invincible, since glancing them to death was an effort in futility, and only two results on the table were "destroyed". Imperial Guard were incredibly powerful in 5th because of those vehicle rules (and a well-designed codex, to be fair). Plus, everyone and their mother had a 4+ cover save almost at all times, so a lot of games wound up being "I shoot, one guy dies, you shoot, two guys die," and not much is dead at the end of the game. I love that 6th/7th kind of put everyone at risk, with vehicles becoming more flimsy and cover getting reduced overall to 5+ instead of 4+.

Oh, and I love Maelstrom of War missions, they're a ton of fun to play.

So, all things considered, I'd have to go with 7th in terms of rules.

KTG17 wrote:
Wow can't believe how popular 5th is.

Given that it is 16 years since 2nd ed was retired I'm amazed that so many people still think of it as the best edition (which of course it is).

I also said 5th. Mostly because things felt the cleanest, especially in the period before Mat Ward started pooping on stuff. It was the tightest version of its way of doing the rules, and things were (relatively - I know, it's still 40k) simple while still offering a bunch of content.

I did actually like 6th, and it comes in a close second. The main failing with 6th is that for every great thing they added, they also added something wonky or confusing, or just crummy. 4th was also okay, as noted in part because of the different way GW did publications, but during 4th edition you were stuck playing with 4th edition... There are a few gems (wound allocation and terrain being the best of any edition I've played), but it was weighed down by so much junk that hadn't yet become refined by 5th edition yet.

I dont' actually have much experience with 7th, though, but I bet it will give 5th a more serious run for its money once I can plow in more seriously. It seems like they kept much of the flavor they added in 6th while "service packing" the rules to clear up some of the worst awfulness of the stuff they broke.

Assuming the trend continues, I imagine 8th will actually be pretty good when it comes out several years from now. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm going to sit out 7th while I wait.

Haven't played enough 7th to offer an opinion on that, but imo 6th edition slightly edges out 5th edition for me.

Dunno. There's a lot of dumb gak in the 6th edition, but I think that a lot of it had more to do with the armies themselves- example being things like 2+ re-rollable saves. That's not really a "6th edition" problem so much as it's a problem with the codices that that give the right cobmination of rules to a unit to allow that to happen. Though, I will say that at least from a balance perspective, allies really hurt more than help.

By comparison, idk if 5th was more "balanced" than 6th or not, but it was a hell of a lot more boring. I'd take whatever 6th edition was over 5th edition's "metal box-hammer40K'. Almost every army that has a troop transport spammed them in competitive lists- implying that the problem was with the edition rules.

So, so very boring. Boring to play, boring to watch. I miss the old vehicle durability, though.

EDIT- On second thought, screw all of that. I pick 5th edition. Box-Hammer40K may have been boring as hell, but god damn I hate fething flyers and every rule that came with them. That alone kills 6th for me. Allies, formations and all the other FOC-raping shenanigans combined with the "super kewl randomness" in everything compounds those issues.

Fifth. It was far from perfect but it feels like 6th was the threshold when everything went out of control. The introduction of divination, seerstars, flyers etc. changed the game forever, and I am not convinced the change was positive.

BlaxicanX wrote:I'd take whatever 6th edition was over 5th edition's "metal box-hammer40K'. Almost every army that has a troop transport spammed them in competitive lists- implying that the problem was with the edition rules.

To be fair, guard players still put everything in boxes now, and eldar usually put everything in boxes before.

I think the main reason 6th edition felt less mech gunline was because tau dominated 2/3ds of the edition, and they don't use transports, and demons also came out and were a huge deal, and they don't even have transports. You look at what else came out - DA and CSM, and rhinos have been pretty crappy for awhile now (though even then, they're still sometimes used).

I think one of the reasons 5th edition appeared like boxhammer was because 5th ed had a guard codex land in the middle that made it so that everyone could take a chimera, and they dropped in new grey knights, with psy-ammo razorbacks, and they added BA with everything's-fast vehicles, and they redid necron so that they had transports AT ALL.

Now, I'd agree that 5th ed rules did heavily favor mech gunlines, so as new codices had the option to play that way, they did, which is why we saw more. They did basically nothing at all to change that in 6th edition though (hullpoints aren't even really a nerf when you consider the loss of the glancing table, and they gained a bunch of other stuff as well). I think 6th ed would have been more boxhammer were it not for other factors.

BlaxicanX wrote: Box-Hammer40K may have been boring as hell, but god damn I hate fething flyers and every rule that came with them. That alone kills 6th for me. Allies, formations and all the other FOC-raping shenanigans combined with the "super kewl randomness" in everything compounds those issues.

Right?

6th ed really did add in a bunch of interesting things, but it was spoiled by all the annoying things they added. It's like 4th ed in that regard. You could go back and play a game with great terrain and wound allocation rules, and that had a closer balance between shooting and assault... but then you'd be playing with old consolidation rules and old SMF and old reserves rules and old missions...

Is it possible to say "I don't know"?

2nd Ed was a complete blast, but the rules weren't very good for the scale of the game. Far better suited to a 10-12 model Necromunda game than a 10-12 unit 40K army. I adore 2nd Ed, but I acknowledge its flaws.

3rd Ed was a great deal of fun, I loved playing it, loved making lists, playing everything from competitive to casual narrative games, loved Apoc (as long as you didn't play it competitively). But, again, I acknowledge the serious flaws that game exhibits.

4th was so boring I skipped it.

5th I skipped as well.

6th brought me back even if there were some large caveats (wound allocation and hull points). But even that turned into a mess by the end, and the introduction of flyers was, IMO, handled poorly.

7th? Don't make me laugh.

My fav edition of 40K was the one we wrote ourselves after 4th Ed came out. Took the best of both worlds, stuck in a little bit of 2nd, and was better for it.

I dont think Apoc was around back in the days of 3rd ed

I think each edition has had some major critical faults, and as much as I have a hard time believing myself saying this, I think the best edition, mechanically, was 5th.

5th had some things I absolutely despised, such as Kill Points (oh look, that squad of Grots and that empty Trukk were worth twice as much as killing Calgar and his Land Raider!) which we still unfortunately have kicking around in places, vehicle shooting rules (oh man you moved? guess your 7 crew battle tank with 5 guns gets to shoot just one gun...), and wound allocation (oh you did 9 wounds to my Nobz unit? that's cute, they're all still alive).

However, overall, aside from that, it was probably the easiest to "pick up and play", and probably had the least imbalanced core rules aside from the issues above, most problems were more problems with the army codex than with the core rules.

I like some of the places 6E and 7E went with some things, but they're much less friendly for just picking up a game on relatively common ground, and are far more open to abuse in terms of what you can bring to the table, and the mission/objective structure is a mess, and Hull Points are probably one of the most daft hybridization mechanics that GW has ever thought of. They try to too hard to get too much detail from forces and units that really should be too large to care about such things. 6E's missions with very powerful Nightfight every single game didn't help either.

There was some stuff I liked about 4th, but between the absurd imbalance between tracked tanks and skimmer tanks and the ludicrous ease with which tracked tanks could be killed (along with the utter pointlessness of tracked transports), the ease with which assault armies could dominate a game and face very little fire at all (2" area terrain completely blocking LoS, consolidations into new combats, etc), independent characters being unable to be targeted unless they were the closest units (and on their own) by shooting, along with target priority tests and whatnot, it made the game very stilted towards armies composed of elite CC units.



My "perfect" edition, if one could call it that, would be 5th ed with 4E wound allocation, 6/7E vehicle shooting rules, 3E/4E victory points rules, and 6E's cover save rules, and maybe a couple of other things would make a really solid 40k ruleset I think.

I have not played 7th Ed as yet

I enjoyed 6th ed games and the general rules system a lot - the issue I had was with the balance of certain units / combos- Cheese Serpents, Riptides and a few others.

I prefer 6th. 7th was a bit rubbish, mainly due to having to buy £50 rulebooks 2 years after buying the last £50 rulebook but also because of a number of highly exploitative rules.

I like 7th. 5th was the most balanced and clean.

Like many here, it's 5th for me. I liked 6th the moment I read the rulebook, but the problem isn't there. The problems with 6th were the armies, and the downward spiral into insanity that followed.

I got in to 40k at the very, very end of 4th, so 5th was my real introduction to the game. I don't know how much of my appreciation for the edition is because of how it felt then, but seeing the poll results makes me think that it's not very much. Back then, the game was a relative mystery. I felt like most units in my army (Tyranids) were worthwhile, and that I genuinely had to build my lists carefully considering what units to take based on what roles they fulfilled. Things have changed now, and not just because I've learned the reality of things. I miss the relevance of close combat. I miss purchasing my psychic powers.

I like 7th, and 6th was almost the same. I like flyers (this may have something to do with the fact that I have always held a passion for aircraft; as a child I aspired to be in the RAF). What I abhor are random tables, especially random psychic powers (especially especially when they are unfairly distributed; see Tyranids). I love the big models like the Knight and Wraithknight, and the idea of Lords of War. As a Chaos player, I much approve of the change to Challenges. The hoarding of all assets (IG) by the Imperium on the Allies Chart, though...

I've yet to play a Maelstrom mission, but I hear almost entirely positive things about it (really the biggest criticism being the impossible objectives, such as kill an enemy psyker when there are no enemy psykers).

In short, I don't find 7th to be the best because I liked 5th more. However, this does not at all mean that I dislike 7th. I also don't hold 6th responsible for what happened to my Tyranids.