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So I have a 4th edition Guard Codex. My friend has the 4th edition Space Marine Codex. I have the 4th edition rule book.

The last time I played 4th edition was way back when we first started wargaming. However when I finally became competent at playing 5th edition comes out and now 5th edition are the rules I remember most.

But since the Gaurd Codex has the doctrines and the Space Marines have something similar we would love to try playing it more often.

What are the pros and cons of 4th edition?

So, the main differences:

Area terrain: 4th edition used a nice, easy abstraction system for terrain, rather than the TLoS garbage we have right now. I don't recall having a single argument about if something was in cover or not.

There were a few other differences with cover as well. For example, units do not give units behind them cover saves in 4th edition. Instead, you have to make a leadership test to see if you can shoot units that are behind ones that are closer. Also, you didn't have super-ruins.

Vehicles: Mostly a different damage chart that was less forgiving. You could cause a vehicle wrecked result with a glancing hit, for example. Also, when you charged a vehicle, your close combat attacks hit the armor face you were attacking, not just counting as if you were hitting rear armor.

They also had slightly different rules for tracing LOS from weapons, and minimum range used to be a real minimum range. Barrage weapons worked slightly differently as well.

Wound allocation: This is big enough to put on its own. 4th ed had, by far, the best wound allocation system. No wound-wrapping.

Skimmers: The old SMF was one of the few genuinely garbage parts of 4th ed, though. Thankfully with guard and SM there was only 1 between the two of them. Enjoy speeders being useful for a change.

Close combat: Also remember that assault was something that was actually doable back in 4th edition. They didn't have running, but they also didn't have a lot of rules that made running necessary to add in the first place.

The biggest thing to note is that it was possible to, at the end of a close combat, consolidate in such a way where you started a new close combat. This meant that you had to actually think for a fraction of a second where you left your units on the board when there was close combat going on.

Not unlike close combat in general. Time to dust off some of those old basic skills like speedbumping.

Anyways, over all 4th edition saw flimsier vehicles and weaker MCs (especially compared to what we have now), and hordes and close combat armies were roughly at their peak. Which was to say, 40k was a game of shooting with some close combat coming in at the end, rather than a game of shooting and then some more shooting.

Pros: Customizable/interesting army books, the little guys mattered more absent the incessant and hilarious escalation of gun sizes in 5e on, the rules were much clearer and less loophole-filled.

Cons: You're stuck with one Codex, no matter how cool or interesting an army concept you've come up with if you can't do it in that one book you're SOL. The power curve may have been a little bit flatter but that doesn't mean some armies (DE, Tau) didn't get completely left out in the cold. Absent hull points one tank can sit and take meltagun hits from now until Doomsday if you keep rolling badly on the damage table. Movement tends to be slower, games tend to be more static.

I actually prefer there being less content in 4th, we simply use our own imaginations and old white dwarfs for that. Like the blood pact rules or the first armoured company rules etc. And more importantly our imagination.

So far sounds pretty good though.

4th edition had its problems.

More than any other edition except maybe 7th, there was a gargantuan gap between Skimmers and Non-skimmers. Skimmers could only ever be glanced as long as they moved at least 6" but also were destroyed if they were immobilized. This had a number of advantages. First, all skimmers were Fast or had cheap wargear to allow them to fire as if Fast (bar the Monolith which had its own impressive capabilities), thus, unless you caught one on the first turn (and were going first), they could only ever be glanced for pretty much the entire game. The major Skimmer races had wargear to mitigate or ignore Stunned results (so they couldn't be prevented from moving) and wargear that mitigated Immobilized results (Tau got to reroll immobilized results on glancing hits, Eldar just became immobilized instead of crashing). So really, you could only ever kill them on 6's on the damage chart (and Eldar Holofields on Falcons forced rolling 2d6-pick-the-lowest so you only had a 1-in-36 chance to kill), while Tracked Tanks and Walkers were killed on glancing 6's and 4+ on Pen's. Also, any unit in a transport that was penetrated automatically had to disembark and take a pinning test, and if having moved over 6" everyone was wounded on a 5+ as well. This made Tracked transports largely completely pointless, while Skimmer transports never suffered this at all.

4E also had some issues with terrain, largely nobody played it correctly, and basically cut ranges down very significantly, as any piece of area terrain 2" thick or more completely blocked LoS, often preventing any LoS to an enemy deployment zone.

Consolidation into combat was another issue, particularly in conjunction with the above two things, in that once something got stuck into close combat (often without ever having been able to be shot at), it could simply move from combat to combat, hiding from any sort of shooting retaliation, and simply rolling up a line. Assault armies dominated this edition and the armies that routinely had the largest margins of victory were usually CC armies or armies with a strong CC component (e.g. Eldar Flying Circus with harlies)

Vehicles also couldn't get cover saves, they could only downgrade pen's to glances on a 4+ if partially obscured.

Additionally, there was a huge gap in codex effectiveness. Some armies were absolutely worthless, much moreso than anything in the current game. Daemonhunters and Imperial Guard in 4E spring to mind as some of the least capable armies GW has ever had.

Rapid Fire weapons were much less effective, if you moved at all you couldn't shoot over 12" away.

Target Priority was another thing, to shoot at something other than the closest unit, you had to take an Ld test, if you failed, you had to shoot at the closest unit. This was a major issue.



On the pro side however, lots of armies had great customization options, though that really started at the end of 3E.

Wound allocation was simple, just roll your saves and remove as many models as failed their save, whoever you wanted. Much easier and less finicky than it is currently.

Old school Victory points were still a thing, where the actual value of something killed mattered. If you killed a Land Raider, you got 250 VP's, and if you killed a Rhino you got 50 VP's (they were 50pts back then), whereas now they're *both* 1 VP, which is asinine. The book also defined margins of victory.

Cover in general wasn't quite as generous as it is now, particularly cover bonuses, the only bad part was mentioned above (where vehicles could not get cover) but you didn't have large numbers of units running around with 3+ and 2+ cover saves, in the open, with frequency.

Invul saves also weren't as crazy, a 2++ was only available to DE and the first time it failed you lost it. 3++ invuls were only available to Necron Wraiths and Sisters of Battle getting off a specific Act of Faith, 4+ was the best possible otherwise as far as I remember.

The art, design, and feel of everything was much more immersive, to me at least, than mmost of the newer stuff, lots of custom terrain in pics, great artwork, a much "darker" feel in general to most of the stuff. 3E and 4E are my favorite GW time periods in terms of look & feel.

Vaktathi wrote: in that once something got stuck into close combat (often without ever having been able to be shot at), it could simply move from combat to combat, hiding from any sort of shooting retaliation, and simply rolling up a line.

Only if you let it. If you stayed outside of D6", it didn't work.

Consolidating into close combat only looks scary if you don't want there to be any player skill involved in defending against close combat. Like now.

Vaktathi wrote:Vehicles also couldn't get cover saves, they could only downgrade pen's to glances on a 4+ if partially obscured.

Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that.

Instead of on a 3+ the tank ignores the damage behind an aegis, it was on a 4+ the tank reduced their chances of being destroyed outright. Basically the opposite of MCs these days who can have their big toe in cover and effectively claim an invul save.

I hazily recall that this sort of thing is what got me to be a foot guard player in 5th ed. Tanks used to be way easier to kill. Well, ones that weren't holofield falcons.

Vaktathi wrote:Old school Victory points were still a thing, where the actual value of something killed mattered. If you killed a Land Raider, you got 250 VP's, and if you killed a Rhino you got 50 VP's (they were 50pts back then), whereas now they're *both* 1 VP, which is asinine. The book also defined margins of victory.

To be fair, though, this was basically 4th edition's only mission, apart from table quarters, which was a very silly way to play. When every game devolved to literally nothing more than who could kill the most stuff fastest, without even the pretense of things like serious board control, it did sort of limit the game.

VPs were nice, but missions, overall, have only been improving since 4th ed.

Swastakowey wrote:I actually prefer there being less content in 4th, we simply use our own imaginations and old white dwarfs for that. Like the blood pact rules or the first armoured company rules etc. And more importantly our imagination.

Thinking about it some more, I'd say this is the biggest overarching difference. A few exceptions like SMF aside, the 4th edition core rules were more solid, and 5th came by and added a lot of good stuff, but also broke some of those core rules. In a way, 4th were the better rules, and 5th were the more comprehensive rules.

Come to think of it, a lot of games have been this way. Light and simple to big, but tight, to huge and soft with lots of options, to bloated with lots of tangents. D&D did this from 1 to 4 and Civilization (the computer game) did this from 2 to 5. When you play the older games, you miss the content, and when you play newer games, you miss the pace and raw interactivity with the rules.

 Ailaros wrote:

Vaktathi wrote: in that once something got stuck into close combat (often without ever having been able to be shot at), it could simply move from combat to combat, hiding from any sort of shooting retaliation, and simply rolling up a line.

Only if you let it. If you stayed outside of D6", it didn't work.

Consolidating into close combat only looks scary if you don't want there to be any player skill involved in defending against close combat. Like now.

Often there wasn't much you could do about it, there wasn't room to move, terrain rolls, etc. For footguard especially this was awful given crowded deployment zones.. It was also especially difficult if two or three enemy units had made it into close combat, often coming out of a skimmer transport or having advanced behind LoS 2"+ thick area terrain without any chance of being shot at, and there wasn't anywhere to avoid it.

CC was extremely powerful in 4E, more than it really should have been.

As for 7E, I think I've had only one game where no CC of any kind occurred, and in most games something has gotten stuck in by turn 2, almost always by turn 3 there's stuff CC stuff going on. In 4E it was often a very quiet turn 1 and 2 as what shots could be made were made and then everything got stuck in turns 3 and 4 and swept up the line through turn 6. Allow units to assault out of stationary transports again and it'd be golden.

Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that.

Instead of on a 3+ the tank ignores the damage behind an aegis, it was on a 4+ the tank reduced their chances of being destroyed outright. Basically the opposite of MCs these days who can have their big toe in cover and effectively claim an invul save.

I hazily recall that this sort of thing is what got me to be a foot guard player in 5th ed. Tanks used to be way easier to kill. Well, ones that weren't holofield falcons.

Mech IG didn't work...at all. I played it in 4E, and I can't think of another army in any other edition of 40k that played as badly as it did. Even footdar in 5E were better.


IG in general were pretty hilariously bad in 4E

I just looked over the doctrines for the Vostroyans the other day, their basic platoon Infantry Squads coming out to be 105pts before any heavy/special weapons, veteran sergeant upgrade, etc Even a relatively common AC/GL squad as equipped currently with a veteran sergeant base were 97pts

To be fair, though, this was basically 4th edition's only mission, apart from table quarters, which was a very silly way to play. When every game devolved to literally nothing more than who could kill the most stuff fastest, without even the pretense of things like serious board control, it did sort of limit the game.

VPs were nice, but missions, overall, have only been improving since 4th ed.

In some ways I'd agree. I much prefer the objective based scenarios of 5E+ to the 4E missions, I just vastly prefer 4E VP's to the 5E KP holdover we have now when they're used.


Also, I forgot about 4E deployment, where you alternated placing models from different FoC slots and then rolled for first turn after deployment. That is very definitely not missed.

 Ailaros wrote:
Area terrain: 4th edition used a nice, easy abstraction system for terrain, rather than the TLoS garbage we have right now. I don't recall having a single argument about if something was in cover or not.

4th used true line of sight. It sounds like you (and a lot of other players did as well) used the rules for determining line of sight in regards to area terrain for all terrain instead. That was one that went around quite a few times in YMDC.

Cover was something almost universally mishandled by players (myself included). I don't know anybody that actually ran anything as "True" line of sight in 4E, in any city or event I played in up and down the west coast.

Ghaz wrote:4th used true line of sight. It sounds like you (and a lot of other players did as well) used the rules for determining line of sight in regards to area terrain for all terrain instead. That was one that went around quite a few times in YMDC.

Anything on a base used the area terrain rules. Which was pretty much everything.

Not the tiny L-shaped ruins GW put out at the time (though even then, I usually saw people putting them on bases with some flocking), but hills, craters, forests (remember when you could use forests?) and ruined buildings made by players all counted.

I actually liked the system where cover could behave slightly differently. A player could choose if they wanted to keep their units out of LOS and not be able to shoot, or have them in LOS with a cover save. When where you stood in terrain mattered, it made the movement phase and terrain more interesting than "Do you want a free invul save with that?"

The terrain system was so good that, with the exception of flamers, the game wasn't forced to have all this mass ignores-cover crap they have these days.

Vaktathi wrote:Often there wasn't much you could do about it, there wasn't room to move, terrain rolls, etc. For footguard especially this was awful given crowded deployment zones.. It was also especially difficult if two or three enemy units had made it into close combat, often coming out of a skimmer transport or having advanced behind LoS 2"+ thick area terrain without any chance of being shot at, and there wasn't anywhere to avoid it.

Yes, if your entire opponent's army charged you at once, you were sort of screwed. Of course, you would have had to do something pretty wrong for your opponent to be able to pull that off. If you didn't focus down units or use speedbumps or, say, temporarily retreat in the face of impossible odds, then honestly you deserved to get steamrolled in my opinion.

People these days treat close combat as this mysterious force that may or may not happen and there's nothing you can do about it if it does. People definitely didn't think about it that way in 4th ed, back when there was more player skill involved in the process.

If we were talking about 3rd ed rhino rushing where you could practically guarantee your whole army got into close combat turn 2, it would be a different story, but given how crappy mech was in 4th (and even then you couldn't assault out of closed-topped transports), that was much less of an issue. Plus, you couldn't run in 4th ed, so you had half the game to manage how the close combat part of the game would resolve.

Vaktathi wrote:

VPs were nice, but missions, overall, have only been improving since 4th ed.

In some ways I'd agree. I much prefer the objective based scenarios of 5E+ to the 4E missions, I just vastly prefer 4E VP's to the 5E KP holdover we have now when they're used.

Well, KP made sense in 5th ed because of the other 2 missions. The other missions HIGHLY rewarded MSU spam. They needed to have something to balance it out, which KP certainly attempted.

Vaktathi wrote:Also, I forgot about 4E deployment, where you alternated placing models from different FoC slots and then rolled for first turn after deployment. That is very definitely not missed.

Ugh.

I do get a tiny bit nostalgic, though, for the old way of terrain placement. It was nice to have it set up where you could make an invincible fortress of doom, but there was a 50% chance your opponent would get to set up in it. Kept things more honest than on the one hand 6th ed's hide the aegis or 7th ed's ability to buy an invincible fortress of doom.

Vaktathi wrote:Mech IG didn't work...at all. I played it in 4E, and I can't think of another army in any other edition of 40k that played as badly as it did. Even footdar in 5E were better.

Well, and you couldn't even really run mech guard if you wanted to. One of the many things I don't miss about the guard's 4th ed codex was the requirement to take a foot platoon for every ONE squad in a chimera.

I do miss 4th ed's serious danger to passengers thing, though. In 4th ed, your transport explodes, and you're toast. The few survivors are pinned and then have to pick themselves out of the ruins of their vehicle. Starting in 5th ed your transport gets destroyed, and so what? They just pop out, brush themselves off and keep going like nothing happened. That's always rankled me, even in 5th ed. It was the reason 5th ed wound up being a mech edition, in addition to the codex changes. I don't recall ever seeing a mechanized gunline before the leafblower.

Bring back real risks instead of braindead "choices", and it would clear up a lot, even today. If it was a serious risk bringing avengers in a wave serpent, where you had to actually think about if you wanted them on foot or not, or if they should disembark instead of hiding in the can the whole game, you would dismiss a great deal in its cheesiness instantaneously.

 Ailaros wrote:

Ghaz wrote:4th used true line of sight. It sounds like you (and a lot of other players did as well) used the rules for determining line of sight in regards to area terrain for all terrain instead. That was one that went around quite a few times in YMDC.

Anything on a base used the area terrain rules. Which was pretty much everything.

Trust me, it came up enough in YMDC during 4th edition. Just like today you still had to discuss with your opponent what terrain counted as what.

 Ailaros wrote:

Well, KP made sense in 5th ed because of the other 2 missions. The other missions HIGHLY rewarded MSU spam. They needed to have something to balance it out, which KP certainly attempted.

Not to get too far into it, but there's no indication, anywhere, that this was the intention of KP's, it's just the reason some people came up with when they wanted to assume GW was actually engaging in legitimate game design and attempting some sort of mission meta balance (in a manner that they've never attempted before or since) instead of simply dumbing down basic arithmetic to make victory calculation not require a calculator.

It's also a really bad way to go about trying to fix that as you can get games where the side that inflicted less realistic damage on its opponent wins. Just had to deal with a loss like that a couple weeks ago, opponent had six models left with a total value of ~200-250pts with a one wound librarian and a 4 man tac squad left and drop pod, I had 2 DKoK Grenadier units at nearly full strength, two heavy mortars squads fully functioning, and a death rider unit down only one model and ~566pts of models left, both of us had Warlord and Linebreaker, I had first blood, and still lost

I do get a tiny bit nostalgic, though, for the old way of terrain placement. It was nice to have it set up where you could make an invincible fortress of doom, but there was a 50% chance your opponent would get to set up in it. Kept things more honest than on the one hand 6th ed's hide the aegis or 7th ed's ability to buy an invincible fortress of doom.

Did they have terrain setup rules in 4E? IIRC they really didn't say much other than "well, if someone sets up the table, there's a convention that the other player gets to choose their deployment zone, if a 3rd party did it, roll off".

Well, and you couldn't even really run mech guard if you wanted to. One of the many things I don't miss about the guard's 4th ed codex was the requirement to take a foot platoon for every ONE squad in a chimera.

You could take the "mechanized' doctrine or run "Grenadiers" and have them be mechanized (that's what I tried). Not that any of them really worked well at all, especially not with Chimeras being 90pts after guns and smoke launchers

It's still amusing that HWS's and SWS's can't take Chimeras even now.

I do miss 4th ed's serious danger to passengers thing, though. In 4th ed, your transport explodes, and you're toast. The few survivors are pinned and then have to pick themselves out of the ruins of their vehicle. Starting in 5th ed your transport gets destroyed, and so what? They just pop out, brush themselves off and keep going like nothing happened. That's always rankled me, even in 5th ed. It was the reason 5th ed wound up being a mech edition, in addition to the codex changes. I don't recall ever seeing a mechanized gunline before the leafblower.

And there's a reason nobody used non-Skimmer transports in 4E as a result. They were non-functional as transports, and simply acted as a damage enhancer for your opponent.

It also hasn't helped that, at least for IG, most of the functional infantry units only function effectively with a transport.

But currently, you have to take a pinning test any time the transport is destroyed,, embarked units have to take an Ld test for every pen or can only fire snapshots, and explosions still force wounds on a 4+ for every passenger. That's pretty solid, and not really that far from 5E.

Well, you wouldn't have to do it 4th ed's way. Just something to make it not so braindead that any unit who can take a transport should, and they should spend as much time as possible in it. At least in 6th+ edition they have to get out to score.

Plus, I feel like transports are still priced like 4th ed (points deflation excluded). They're given the price of a vehicle with guns, and then the transport part is just tacked on for free. That might have worked in a world where you sometimes wanted to be mounted up and sometimes didn't, or where there were risks involved, but nowadays transport really just means free 1++ for everything inside and few consequences if the vehicle is killed.

A dakkapred being the same cost as a chimera (with appended autocannon price) is insane. Making a wave serpent as cheap as a falcon or fire prism is even moreso. Tanks should have to pay for all of their armor, mobility and guns, and then have to pay to also be a transport. If not in points, then in some other way, such as risk.

Something to cut its cheese factor a bit, especially given how bad hordes are these days.

And yeah, in 4th ed, you rolled to see who got first turn, but you also rolled to see who got to choose which side of the table to deploy on, rather than rolling both of them into the same die roll and then having to stupidly add seizing the initiative as an ineffective afterthought.

Oh, also...

AnomanderRake wrote:The power curve may have been a little bit flatter but that doesn't mean some armies (DE, Tau) didn't get completely left out in the cold.

Anyone who doesn't remember relentless TL S10 Ap1, or firewarriors exploding AV10/11, or MSM in VP games needs a refresher course in just how "bad" tau were in 4th ed.

Just because it was actually possible to open up the rules for the assault phase when playing against them didn't make them bad.

Also, DE were, if anything stronger in 4th ed than now. Yeah, raider-based armies were a fair bit worse, but foot DE used to be brutal. Playing "where's my mandrakes?" as beasts and the 2++ machine of doom ate your face off kind of hurt.

 Ailaros wrote:
Also, DE were, if anything stronger in 4th ed than now. Yeah, raider-based armies were a fair bit worse, but foot DE used to be brutal.

Wyches rolling up whole flanks of a slower army with assault and consolidating into the next assault... ouch.

Worst part of fourth edition was the chaos codex. Specifically iron warriors and slaanesh. It was broken beyond all reasoning (it would make fifth ed grey knights blush with shame).

Transports were utter garbage, turning the third ed 'rhino rush' armies on their heads, and turning most armies without skimmers into fairly static sit and shoot affairs. Non skimmer vehicles were pillboxes for the most part.

Staying clear of that, it was fairly ok.

Space marines were the 6man min/max las/plas and assault cannon on everything spam army.

And guard? Ooft, their broken build of choice was drop troops. Iron discipline, close order drill, drop troops, special weapons squads. You could have an army with fifty special weapons (plasmas, meltas, flowers) deep striking on turn two that could not be shot at on the way down. I saw it one-turn no end of armies.

I didn't mind 4th ed at all. Basically 3rd ed with a few more rules. I quite liked Pete Haines' vehicle rules with their access points and fire points. You had to shoot the nearest target or take a Ld test to shoot something else, which harked back to 2nd ed but was easier.
Biggest pro for any old edition: Cheap as chips
Against: Finding opponents!

IMO 4th was horrible. Between skimmers and combat consolidation, not a lot of fun.

 Byte wrote:
IMO 4th was horrible. Between skimmers and combat consolidation, not a lot of fun.

Only person in the thread to have said that.

XD

4th ed had great rules, but I loved combat consolidation it made assualt combat actually viable for an army.

 Asherian Command wrote:
I loved combat consolidation it made assualt combat actually viable for an army.

Congratulations on playing an assault army then. It was utter BS for anyone else, even more so if the terrain and army numbers made it hard to be out of consolidate range. I know it's not nice to put assault units on the table only to see them get shot before they do anything, but you had the same back then - only it was guys that sucked at assault getting murdered before they could do anything. And all the while the assault unit was invulnerable to shooting after making it's first charge.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
I loved combat consolidation it made assualt combat actually viable for an army.

Congratulations on playing an assault army then. It was utter BS for anyone else, even more so if the terrain and army numbers made it hard to be out of consolidate range. I know it's not nice to put assault units on the table only to see them get shot before they do anything, but you had the same back then - only it was guys that sucked at assault getting murdered before they could do anything. And all the while the assault unit was invulnerable to shooting after making it's first charge.

It took 2 turns to get to the enemies board safely. That is utter BS it is your own fault for not positioning your units in such a way that allows them to be able to be useful.

I will only play 40K with my friends if we are using 4th edition. Between material for third and fourth editions, I have basically everything I would ever need for 40K, and anything I do not have is idiotically cheap on the internet. For me, I have basically frozen 40K at the time just after the 4th edition rules dropped, but I do have to say that I throw in the odd codex that is out of edition if it is better, like using the 2010 codex for Eldar makes them more fun to play than the earlier codex editions, (or the current one).

I just loved all the material for 40K from that period- so much so that I prefer to think of it as the best time there was to play 40K. Look what we had:

-Vehicle Design Rules: I have actually bought vehicles from today, and easily made 4e-compatible rules. Now my Oldcrons can have Newcron vehicles.

-White Dwarf and Chapter Approved Compilations: Remember Kroot Mercs? Or Deathwatch Kill-Teams? Feral Orks?

-Awesome summer campaign armies: I own 2500pts of Space Wolves 13th Company, complete with a big squad of awesome metal Wulfen. Or how about Lost and the Damned, or Speed Freeks, or Ulthwe strike forces? Black Templars that only needed a couple of pages added to Codex Space marines to be unique and cool?

Things like Cityfight could spice up a game night.

Remember when Sisters of Battle had a physical codex? Witch Hunters and Daemon Hunters were the cool way they used to do codexes, where you got several force options for the price of one.

The largest universal problem with 4th edition was skimmers, but at least for me that is a non-issue. My Eldar have two grav-tanks, that's all. All the terrain and line of sight rules were much better than in 7th edition.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I will only play 40K with my friends if we are using 4th edition. Between material for third and fourth editions, I have basically everything I would ever need for 40K, and anything I do not have is idiotically cheap on the internet. For me, I have basically frozen 40K at the time just after the 4th edition rules dropped, but I do have to say that using the 2010 codex for Eldar makes them more fun than the earlier codex editions, or even the current one.

I just loved all the material for 40K from that period- so much so that I prefer to think of it as the best time there was to play 40K. Look what we had:

-Vehicle Design Rules: I have actually bought vehicles from today, and easily made 4e-compatible rules. Now my Oldcrons can have Newcron vehicles.

-White Dwarf and Chapter Approved Compilations: Remember Kroot Mercs? Or Deathwatch Kill-Teams? Feral Orks?

-Awesome summer campaign armies: I own 2500pts of Space Wolves 13th Company, complete with a big squad of awesome metal Wulfen. Or how about Lost and the Damned, or Speed Freeks, or Ulthwe strike forces? Black Templars that only needed a couple of pages added to Codex Space marines to be unique and cool?

Things like Cityfight could spice up a game night.

Remember when Sisters of Battle had a physical codex? Witch Hunters and Daemon Hunters were the cool way they used to do codexes, where you got several force options for the price of one.

The largest universal problem with 4th edition was skimmers, but at least for me that is a non-issue. My Eldar have two grav-tanks, that's all. All the terrain and line of sight rules were much better than in 7th edition.

IN addition you could use on special nights rules from 7th or missions from 5th.

True. I also love how the Universal Special Rules in 4th edition consisted of maybe 20-odd actual rules entries over 5 pages, not some huge bloated thing. And they were mostly just a collated version of rules that had been in individual codexes since 3rd edition, like Fleet of Foot/Hoof.


Especially if money is an issue and you are looking to get some close friends into 40K that are not involved with it yet, 4th edition era is by far the cheapest way to play 40K.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
, but I do have to say that I throw in the odd codex that is out of edition if it is better, like using the 2010 codex for Eldar makes them more fun to play than the earlier codex editions, (or the current one).

What 2010 codex? Fourth edition Eldar came out in 2006. The sixth edition book came out 2013. There was not a codex in between.

I really enjoyed 4th. One of the big pluses for me was I liked that you had to roll to hit with things like plasma cannons and frag missiles. I didn't really like how the scattered in 5th. Wound allocation was easier in 4th, it only makes sense that if the meltagun guy dies someone else in the squad picks it up.

I never really had a problem using mech guard in 4th, back then most people didn't have the anti tank fire power to deal with 12 chimeras before the rest of the army got them. At least in my area we never found skimmers that difficult. Sooner or later they would get immobilized and crash. In the case of the Tau/Eldar ones that landed you just move around them and shoot them in the rear armour. Now I am sure metas were different in other areas. We had a a lot of marine players running 3 squads of 2 land speaders each with assault cannon, but they went down eventually.

A friend of mine wants to start playing 4th again. We didn't like 5th but rolled with it, 6th nuked 40K in my area and we have no interest in 7th. So if you are going to be out of touch go with what you like. We my make a house rule and allow the 5th Blood Angels book, my friend likes it more than the mini dex. I also prefer the 5th DE book, but the 3rd ed book played well in 4th, just not as organized.

 Arschbombe wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
, but I do have to say that I throw in the odd codex that is out of edition if it is better, like using the 2010 codex for Eldar makes them more fun to play than the earlier codex editions, (or the current one).

What 2010 codex? Fourth edition Eldar came out in 2006. The sixth edition book came out 2013. There was not a codex in between.

Urk. I meant the 2006 Codex. Mine says it is the 2010 print edition, I was looking at the wrong date, sorry. Half the time I have to look at the date to remember which edition each codex was. I have been playing since 2nd edition, I have seen a LOT of different codex covers, lol.

Man, this is really making me want to go back and play some 4th. I might have to go find the rule book on the Internet, I still have the old codexes.

Was 4th still the time of the original DE codex?

Hmmmm....I believe so? My second edition version (the one with the White Dwarf material added in) has the same cover style as the other 4e stuff. I think that was the time period where they got forgotten for a huge time before the revamp of their entire army.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Hmmmm....I believe so? My second edition version (the one with the White Dwarf material added in) has the same cover style as the other 4e stuff. I think that was the time period where they got forgotten for a huge time before the revamp of their entire army.

Correct or It was 3rd ed. I Don't remember, I was quite young when 3rd came out.

Its been a while XD. But I still remember fondly how awesome 4th ed was.

I remember during the 4th ed era when we had many different things such as the store participation where WAGH fest was a thing. People allowed Movie Marines!

People also let zombies be a thing. And also had a WAGH christmas,

It also was when 4th allowed for storyline progression and added new characters.

5th Edition Allowed us to have new special characters for space marines and eldar etc.

Useful list of codex books here
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Codices_%28List%29#.U-wzavldXTc
The 3rd ed books from Witch Hunters on, including the revised ones, were written for 4th because they included fire and access points (which were trial rules in WD) in the vehicle descriptions. So you can use those too.
We've been playing a bit of 3rd ed at our club, as it's even simpler than 4th.