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 Vaktathi wrote:
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.

That was the straw. We gave up on 40K and wrote our own version thanks to 4th Ed.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Eldar however routinely ran 7-8 very hard to kill Skimmer tanks, which, for 4E, was a lot of tanks. Tau also would routinely run a good number of tanks, with many of the same benefits.

Didn't say they were anything scary like they are now, but were exceedingly difficult to stop, particularly as with dedicated AT guns they were harder to put out of action than something like a Leman Russ tank was, provided reasonable firepower, and were almost impossible to stop from delivering their cargo, once kitted properly.


O_o Falcon were one of the major top tournament units. Even better than the Serpent's Energy Field, they could take Holofields (where the serpent could not), so any hit had to roll 2d6 pick the lowest for damage, meaning a kitted Falcon could only be destroyed on boxcars. They were what gave rise to the "Eldar Flying Circus", load them up with harlies, send them forward, turn 2 the Harlies disembarked and assaulted something, striking at I6 and rending on 6's to hit with Kiss's. Fire Dragons were another favorite. That was *the* combo to beat in the second half of 4th edition.

I doubt 7-8 Skimmers in a highly competitive environment even with, 155 point Wave Serpent that is over 1000 points in vehicles. Yes they could be difficult to kill, but you still have to buy 7-8 units to put in them and an HQ. 7-8 is a huge exaggeration of the times.

Maybe you were not scared but you keep defending them as if you were intimidated in some way. The elder skimmers were good but they were not unbeatable.

How did these magical Harlequins get into combat. The Falcon was not an assault vehicle. Once they get out of the falcon, shoot them. They only had a 5 up invul. I recall only one time Harlequins got into combat with me and it was just the squad leader. Your millage may very but around my way they were so ineffective that people stopped using them because they were shot to death as soon as they got out. Even bolters would obliterate them. aT3 with a 5 up invul is very flimsy. Around me, and we played heavy tournaments, Scorpions and Fire Dragons were much more popular.

7-8 is what I faced fairly routinely. That's what I built for my own Eldar army in the last days of 4E/early 5E.

I'll avoid the inquiries into my psychological state and largely stick to how the units and rules actually worked. You can also do a quick google search and find dozens of threads on numerous forums and blogs regarding the issues with the Falcon relatively easily.

As for Harlies, in 4E you could assault out of a transport and assault as long as the transport had not moved (though it *could* pivot). Only wtth 6E in 2012 could you not assault out of a non-assault vehicle at all under any circumstances (you could do it in 5th but only if you didn't pivot).

So turn 1 you'd jet forward in the Falcons, turn 2 you'd pivot the transport, unload the harlies, Fleet of Foot in the shooting phase (like Run is now but was unique to this rule then), and assault in the assault phase. So you'd have a 10-15" total range from the rear hatch (after pivoting!) to use to get into assault range, meaning that hatch could be 20" away from the nearest enemy model at the start of the Eldar turn and the Harlies could still get stuck in.

On top of that, with a Shadowseer they could only ever be shot at from 2d6x2" away, so even if they wiped their target and couldn't consolidate into something else, they typically could only be shot at by units *very* close (on average within 14").

You didn't need 7-8 skimmers. 4th ed was all about VP. A falcon was practically indestructable and reasonably guaranteed to at least immobilize a vehicle or two or bring a squad or two down to half health, if not do much, much more than that. Its ratio of killing power to killability was absurd.

And, of course, if you were playing with table quarters, there was little better in the game at the time than a falcon or wave serpent.

And I actually sort of liked the old target prioritization rule. Ld is supposed to represent more than just bravery, which is nearly all it does now. It's also supposed to represent things like discipline under fire, like how it's used in the guard codex with orders, priest abilities, and the like. It also gave you more reason to take screening and harassment units, which haven't had any real purpose since 5th and especially 6th ed dropped.

kodi wrote:I sorely miss the "make your chapter" part of the SM codex, or the equivalent the guard had.

AegisGrimm wrote:Some of the most fun I've had in 40K were painting and converting armies for Space Wolves 13th Company, or an entire army of Kroot Mercs from Chapter Approved.

You can still do that now.

It's a misconception I see a lot about those days. Take guard doctrines, for example. People pine for them, forgetting that the codex that came after still had nearly all of them (except cheesy drop troops), they just didn't have them as a centralized thing anymore. Before you could run veterans and grenadiers and iron discipline, and after you could as well, they just got changed to by-unit options.

What 4th was, was saying "you can't do any of these things" and then coming back and writing chapter-approved exceptions to them. Since 5th ed it's been much more "do what you want". Now that we have unbound, you can't really say that you can't run things you could back in 4th ed anymore, while the possible ways you could combine things have exploded exponentially, way faster than people can write fluff about them.

The rules have become much less restrictive for fluffy players, not losing things they once could do.

 Ailaros wrote:

And I actually sort of liked the old target prioritization rule. Ld is supposed to represent more than just bravery, which is nearly all it does now. It's also supposed to represent things like discipline under fire, like how it's used in the guard codex with orders, priest abilities, and the like. It also gave you more reason to take screening and harassment units, which haven't had any real purpose since 5th and especially 6th ed dropped.

The problem is that one stat for all of these things is fairly silly (that's why there was originally 3 different stats, Int, Ld and Cool, and why Ogryns should be *very* hard to break but they use Ld as an intelligence dump stat instead...)

On top of that, it was intensely punitive as the armies which relied most on shooting (at least, infantry shooting) typically had the worst Ld, and the armies that didn't care about shooting were (and still are) very high leadership and often had rerolls (taking a basic SM captain back in 4E made your entire army Ld10).

DIdn't the target priority rules force you to shoot things you couldn't hurt? I may be remembering that incorrectly.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To be fair, the Hellhound was the only "torrent" unit in the game at that point. That was originally it's unique "schtick". That said, it having to hit on a 4+, or roll every model individually on a 4+, was incredibly lame

No, it was awesome. It meant the damned thing almost never missed.

You placed the template, then rolled to hit. If you hit, you hit everything. If you missed, you then rolled a D6 for everything touched and on a 4+ got a hit. It was so hard to miss with that thing. It was fantastic!

 Vaktathi wrote:
7-8 is what I faced fairly routinely. That's what I built for my own Eldar army in the last days of 4E/early 5E.

I'll avoid the inquiries into my psychological state and largely stick to how the units and rules actually worked. You can also do a quick google search and find dozens of threads on numerous forums and blogs regarding the issues with the Falcon relatively easily.

As for Harlies, in 4E you could assault out of a transport and assault as long as the transport had not moved (though it *could* pivot). Only wtth 6E in 2012 could you not assault out of a non-assault vehicle at all under any circumstances (you could do it in 5th but only if you didn't pivot).

So turn 1 you'd jet forward in the Falcons, turn 2 you'd pivot the transport, unload the harlies, Fleet of Foot in the shooting phase (like Run is now but was unique to this rule then), and assault in the assault phase. So you'd have a 10-15" total range from the rear hatch (after pivoting!) to use to get into assault range, meaning that hatch could be 20" away from the nearest enemy model at the start of the Eldar turn and the Harlies could still get stuck in.

On top of that, with a Shadowseer they could only ever be shot at from 2d6x2" away, so even if they wiped their target and couldn't consolidate into something else, they typically could only be shot at by units *very* close (on average within 14").

Back then most tournaments were 1850, 7 wave serpents and even if you take 6 squads of guardians(cheapest thing eldar have), that is 1565. That leaves you 285 points for an HQ and the grav weapons for the guardians. 7-8 highly unlikely.

So if you don't move the transport you lose the big benefit for being a fast skimmer that most people complain about.

That is a big part of looking back on editions, most of the complaints were things that rarely happened and just tend to be peoples over reaction to codex' they didn't do well against.

No but Eldar Skimmers were a nightmare and were near-indestructible. They were as much of a problem then as they are now.

O_o

Eldar could take cheaper units than 10man Guardian squads, 5 minimum sized dire avenger units with a Scatterlaser/Vectored Engines/Spirit Stones serpent will run 1025 points.

For 1850 what you'd commonly see is something generally resembling this, with some mixing and matching per player preference.

4 small squads of Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent

1 Fire Dragon unit in a Wave Serpent,

2 squads of Harlequins in Falcons

and a Jetbike farseer.

That's 7 skimmer tanks in 1850pts with largely untargetable psychic support.

Also, depending on positioning and relative distance of the enemy units, you didn't necessarily always *have* to pivot the transport, only if it was necessary, the vast majority of the time, with a 10-15" movement range, you could position the Falcon so that you didn't need to (particularly as Run did not exist for units to evade the harlies, they could only ever move 6")

And even then, I'd agree that wave serpents weren't the biggest problem. As mentioned, their relative lack of killing power made them slightly less awful, compared to a dual EML+shuricannon falcon.

But yeah, I don't think I ever destroyed a wave serpent in 4th edition. More survivable than the already-stupid falcon, but at least it didn't rip my army apart...

Really, 4th ed saw the original mech gunline. All the hate people poured on the leafblower, but moreso because it was the first to do it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No but Eldar Skimmers were a nightmare and were near-indestructible. They were as much of a problem then as they are now.

Agreed, weird how others don't remember. I would say they were worse in 4th. At least now they can be assaulted normally.

oh man, yeah, only ever hit on 6's in CC unless immobilized, on top of being hit on whatever armor facing the models are in contact with (so 12 typically)

An average of 432 S8 Powerfist attacks were needed to kill a Holofield Falcon in CC

That said, vehicles are absurdly easy to kill in CC in 7th edition, any marginally intact unit with any sort of CC upgrades will practically auto-delete a fully intact tank in one round of CC

 Byte wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No but Eldar Skimmers were a nightmare and were near-indestructible. They were as much of a problem then as they are now.

Agreed, weird how others don't remember. I would say they were worse in 4th. At least now they can be assaulted normally.

They had fewer guns (no shooting the serpent shield and no laser lock) in 4th, they were at least 50% more expensive, and they were all BS3. Much tougher (at least on anything with a Holofield), but nowhere near as silly as Wave Serpents today.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Byte wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No but Eldar Skimmers were a nightmare and were near-indestructible. They were as much of a problem then as they are now.

Agreed, weird how others don't remember. I would say they were worse in 4th. At least now they can be assaulted normally.

They had fewer guns (no shooting the serpent shield and no laser lock) in 4th, they were at least 50% more expensive, and they were all BS3. Much tougher (at least on anything with a Holofield), but nowhere near as silly as Wave Serpents today.

Offensively...

Give me a survivability any game. Scoring wins.

It's also not like the Wave Serpent currently can't be insanely survivable, between the shield and a potential 3+ cover save in the open, the only easy way to crack it is through assault.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's also not like the Wave Serpent currently can't be insanely survivable, between the shield and a potential 3+ cover save in the open, the only easy way to crack it is through assault.

I'll take it!*

*remembers playing an RTT where I had two SM assault squads wrapped around a WS and it laughed at me.

 Vaktathi wrote:
An average of 432 S8 Powerfist attacks were needed to kill a Holofield Falcon in CC

That's why you got behind 'em with Bolt Pistols!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
An average of 432 S8 Powerfist attacks were needed to kill a Holofield Falcon in CC

That's why you got behind 'em with Bolt Pistols!

Bikes were also very effective at doing this.

I used to rush 'em. Fire off all the bolt pistols and then charge in. Get enough attacks in and you're bound to get a couple of glances.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
An average of 432 S8 Powerfist attacks were needed to kill a Holofield Falcon in CC

That's why you got behind 'em with Bolt Pistols!

Still rolling 2d6 pick the lowest for armor pen

That happened, but wasn't always an easy thing to do.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
An average of 432 S8 Powerfist attacks were needed to kill a Holofield Falcon in CC

That's why you got behind 'em with Bolt Pistols!

Bikes were also very effective at doing this.

They could be, but they were relatively uncommon. I don't think I saw non-Eldar bikers more than once or twice in 4E (at least before Orks in the last few months of the edition), they lacked many of the bonuses they have now (no Jink, they remained natural T4 vs Instant Death), and SM bikers were 32pts base, CSM bikers were 33/34pts each. and (until the last 6 months of 4E) Ork bikers were 30ppm and had to rely on a 5+ cover save for everything

Yeah, I distinctly recall the chatter about bikes being terrible at the time.

Though this one when someone at my store regularly ran a techmarine on a bike because it was cool.

Which it was.

I'll just step in and say I really really hated wound allocation from older editions. I'm probably the only one, but I have horrible memories of my opponent running a unit of ork nob bikers that had about 10 models, and they all were equipped slightly differently. The rules said you had to remove multi-wound models when possible (so no spreading wounds around, you had to put two wounds on each model), but that only applied for units where they were all equipped the same. This 10 man strong unit with T5 and an inherent 5+ cover save (before ignore cover grew on trees) had to take about 11 wounds before any of them left the table. That one unit wiped out my entire army multiple times.

 dementedwombat wrote:
I'll just step in and say I really really hated wound allocation from older editions. I'm probably the only one, but I have horrible memories of my opponent running a unit of ork nob bikers that had about 10 models, and they all were equipped slightly differently. The rules said you had to remove multi-wound models when possible (so no spreading wounds around, you had to put two wounds on each model), but that only applied for units where they were all equipped the same. This 10 man strong unit with T5 and an inherent 5+ cover save (before ignore cover grew on trees) had to take about 11 wounds before any of them left the table. That one unit wiped out my entire army multiple times.

That was 5th edition you're thinking of, in 4E it was not possible to do that.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I'll just step in and say I really really hated wound allocation from older editions. I'm probably the only one, but I have horrible memories of my opponent running a unit of ork nob bikers that had about 10 models, and they all were equipped slightly differently. The rules said you had to remove multi-wound models when possible (so no spreading wounds around, you had to put two wounds on each model), but that only applied for units where they were all equipped the same. This 10 man strong unit with T5 and an inherent 5+ cover save (before ignore cover grew on trees) had to take about 11 wounds before any of them left the table. That one unit wiped out my entire army multiple times.

That was 5th edition you're thinking of, in 4E it was not possible to do that.

Ok, it's been a while. I'm not surprised I'm getting my editions mixed up. Now you mention it I'm pretty sure 4th was the "outflanking genestealers and the doom stomped me repeatedly" edition. You're right, 5th was the "ork bikers stomped me repeatedly" edition.

The fact I have only played Tau since 3rd edition probably is what makes me not remember earlier editions particularly fondly. That brief window when 6th edition hit but before we got our new codex were some of my favorite games come to think of it. That said, whenever people complain about Tau, I just think back to how we were a bottom tier army for an easy 2.5-3 editions.

 Vaktathi wrote:
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.

IIRC, that was actually a bigger problem in 3rd edition. 4th still allowed you to consolidate straight into another unit, but also let the enemy shoot the consolidating unit in the following shooting phase.

dementedwombat wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I'll just step in and say I really really hated wound allocation from older editions. I'm probably the only one, but I have horrible memories of my opponent running a unit of ork nob bikers that had about 10 models, and they all were equipped slightly differently. The rules said you had to remove multi-wound models when possible (so no spreading wounds around, you had to put two wounds on each model), but that only applied for units where they were all equipped the same. This 10 man strong unit with T5 and an inherent 5+ cover save (before ignore cover grew on trees) had to take about 11 wounds before any of them left the table. That one unit wiped out my entire army multiple times.

That was 5th edition you're thinking of, in 4E it was not possible to do that.

Ok, it's been a while. I'm not surprised I'm getting my editions mixed up. Now you mention it I'm pretty sure 4th was the "outflanking genestealers and the doom stomped me repeatedly" edition. You're right, 5th was the "ork bikers stomped me repeatedly" edition.

The fact I have only played Tau since 3rd edition probably is what makes me not remember earlier editions particularly fondly. That brief window when 6th edition hit but before we got our new codex were some of my favorite games come to think of it. That said, whenever people complain about Tau, I just think back to how we were a bottom tier army for an easy 2.5-3 editions.

Tau weren't bad in 4E, Fish-o-Fury was pretty solid, but were usually some iteration of "3 units of crisis suits, some Fire Warriors in Devilfish, and HS units maxed out with Hammerheads or Broadsides"

insaniak wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
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.

IIRC, that was actually a bigger problem in 3rd edition. 4th still allowed you to consolidate straight into another unit, but also let the enemy shoot the consolidating unit in the following shooting phase.

Alas, you could not do this in 4E :(

Jesus, I guess 4th ed. just damaged you guys a helluva lot more than me. I had lots of fun in that era, though I must be wierd because from back then I have at least 15-20 bikers spread across three Space Marine armies, I only ran Eldar with a single Wave Serpent, a single Falcon, and two Vypers (Saim-Hann themed army, so I have two large squads of jetbikes and pathfinders as infantry so I don't need lots of skimmer transport).

If you're playing friendly matches with a bit of homeruling it doesn't really matter what edition you're playing. Every one of them has flaws.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Jesus, I guess 4th ed. just damaged you guys a helluva lot more than me. I had lots of fun in that era, though I must be wierd because from back then I have at least 15-20 bikers spread across three Space Marine armies, I only ran Eldar with a single Wave Serpent, a single Falcon, and two Vypers (Saim-Hann themed army, so I have two large squads of jetbikes and pathfinders as infantry so I don't need lots of skimmer transport).

In my area the only thing that was crazy in 4th was the 3.5 Chaos Marine codex. We saw a lot of Daemonets and noise marines. Nurgel could be tough but not crazy. Khorne was good but we didn't see too many of them, I still don't understand how a loin cloth justifies giving blood letter a 3+ armour save , but oh well. The 4th ed dex brought them in line with the rest.

We had one guy that was fond of running 3 squads of 2 land speeders w/assault cannon and heavy bolter. The big thing was you had to take out both to get any points, IIRC back then you had to reduce a unit below 50% for full points. It was tough to play against but not over the top. He hated my guard w/10 chimeras

IIRC we had a good mix of all armies except Catachans. We even had a few Daemon and Witch Hunters.

Bloodletters were weird in 3E and 4E, they were the odd Beastman looking things before GW went back to the original design at the beginning of 5E.