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 Azreal13 wrote:
There were a lot more decisions to be made in 2nd, for all of the random (you had to commit to charges before other movement or shooting, so no cracking off a few rounds and seeing who needs a kicking later on down the line, overwatch was a genuine trade off, rather than extra free shooting and another tax on assault focussed armies)

I guess I felt a lot more like I played a game in 2nd (and 5th I suppose as well) whereas I more feel like I participate in a game of 6th+.

Spot on. My complain was about players who mistakenly take 2nd for a fast and furious romp when in fact playing a 2000 points game was an evening-long affair but yes, I agree that the game was far more in-depth than it is now. It was the kind of game in which when or where you used an ability (like unmasking the Callidus Assassing hidden in one of the enemy squads, headbutting a tank - Ghaz's adamantium skull was crazy good back then- or dropping a grenade) could decide the entire game. It's not like current 40k plays on autopilot, but the true game-changing decisions are usually made outside the gaming table. I don't think 6th+ are to blame for that, though. The trend started back in 3rd already, and has been going on for decades now.

Oh god! The vehicle rules! Deciding if you'd hit that rock in two turns time if you accelerated to fast this turn!

I guess the problem is on the one hand having players make meaningful decisions, complete with sacrifices, and on the other hand, making things just sort of absurdly complex. 2nd edition was annoying in part because it sometimes looked like you, the player, were having to do things that the models themselves should have been able to figure out on their own. Like, do I need to do EVERYTHING for you?

It's one of the reasons I like the old target prioritization rules. It gives the models themselves a bit of a mind of their own, rather than being perfect psychic slaves that do exactly what you want them to do, even if it's to their own impending, bloody detriment. I also like how 40k used to have rules where squads could just run away if they were faced with impossible situations. You know, before everything got fearless for no reason.

It is sad that new overwatch is "here, roll some extra dice" instead of "which of two ways would you like to shoot this turn? You can only pick one..."

I still remember that time when a driverless warbike ran over and killed Ahriman

 Agent_Tremolo wrote:
I still remember that time when a driverless warbike ran over and killed Ahriman

I remember random stuff that was fun... Guys set ablaze by flamers, running randomly around the table setting fire to anyone they bumped into. Balls of plasma from grenades suddenly doubling in size. That Captain rolling for his Displacer Field to escape that Vortex grenade, and not rolling quite enough scatter distance to escape it...

Now I just get to roll to find out if my Warlord gets a special ability that he already had to begin with. Yay.

Oh, that was aimed at Azreal's mention of the crazy 2nd ed. vehicle rules - yep, a well-placed shot could kill a vehicle's driver back then.

Honestly I think 3rd cut some of the most annoying bits of 2nd edition, but also took away some of its most interesting ideas. Going back to vehicles, they could potentially move faster in 2nd than in 3rd but their manoeuvrability was limited, and so firing arcs, sponsons and turrets mattered, as did armor facings. And, like Alairos mentioned, it's good we have Overwatch now but I'd much prefer it was activated by the player - like jink or run - instead of automated.

Not so sure if I'd want those 4th edition targeting rules back, though. Well, at least I'd be hiding the cream of my army behind a curtain of gretchin




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@Insaniak - There was a lot of counter-intuitive randomness in 2nd, but also a lot of cool atmospheric details I'd love to have back. Like a tank spinning after snapping a track, perhaps leaving its soft sides exposed to the enemy guns - It's random, too, but somehow feels more "real" than rolling to find what's your commander's mood for today or if you accidentally step into a nest of psychic wasps.

 Agent_Tremolo wrote:
Oh, that was aimed at Azreal's mention of the crazy 2nd ed. vehicle rules - yep, a well-placed shot could kill a vehicle's driver back then.

Honestly I think 3rd cut some of the most annoying bits of 2nd edition, but also took away some of its most interesting ideas. Going back to vehicles, they could potentially move faster in 2nd than in 3rd but their manoeuvrability was limited, and so firing arcs, sponsons and turrets mattered, as did armor facings. And, like Alairos mentioned, it's good we have Overwatch now but I'd much prefer it was activated by the player - like jink or run - instead of automated.

Not so sure if I'd want those 4th edition targeting rules back, though. Well, at least I'd be hiding the cream of my army behind a curtain of gretchin




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@Insaniak - There was a lot of counter-intuitive randomness in 2nd, but also a lot of cool atmospheric details I'd love to have back. Like a tank spinning after snapping a track, perhaps leaving its soft sides exposed to the enemy guns - It's random, too, but somehow feels more "real" than rolling to find what's your commander's mood for today or if you accidentally step into a nest of psychic wasps.

Would cobbling together all the good from all the edition make anything worthwhile?

Good reasons guys, i like the ideas. the earlier editions (specifically 3rd, 4th and maybe 5th) i found were better for having a smaller battle and still feeling like you had an afternoons worth while but in 7th i find that with all the special rules it only feels worth doing with 1500 point or more. this is just what i feel as i used to play 1 or 2 hour long battles with my friends at 500 to 1000 points each (i feel it was better for space marines )

But 2nd ed had worse balance between the haves and have-nots than any edition since.

Very true. 2nd could be both frustratingly stupid and crazy fun. Its main advantage over other editions was its quirky personality. Each edition since then has increasingly lost the crazy and kept the frustrating.

I know I'm probably in the minority here, but 7th edition is my favorite edition that I've actually played. I started playing in 5th, and by the end of it, I was pretty burnt out. It felt like I always wound up fighting the enemy's parking lot rather than their actual soldiers, and every new book felt like it was intentionally designed to be outright better than the one that came before it.

6th was too chaotic. This is owed, I think, largely to the fact that two chaos books came out during that edition, but the sheer amount of STUFF you had to roll for and keep track of in a game was offputting.

7th edition didn't really do away with the randomness of 6th, but it just seems to work for me for some reason. Maybe it's because I appreciate the "ask your opponent what kind of game sounds fun," aspect as it was something I was already doing in 5th. Vehicles are easier to deal with, and my eldar are now better able to deal with them than in 5th, I like the splats (though I dislike how pricey they are to obtain), and enjoy that the new release method allows for things like harlequins to come out.

That said, I hear good things about 3rd and 4th and have the books for each. If I had to throw all the editions into a blender to try and extract the best parts, 3rd or 4th would likely be my core. Though I wonder if 7th might be significantly improved by simply clarifying a few rules and removing some of the randomness of its charts....

Wyldhunt wrote:


7th edition didn't really do away with the randomness of 6th, but it just seems to work for me for some reason. Maybe it's because I appreciate the "ask your opponent what kind of game sounds fun," aspect as it was something I was already doing in 5th. Vehicles are easier to deal with, and my eldar are now better able to deal with them than in 5th

It should be pointed out that 5th was the only edition where Skimmers did not have massive advantages over non-skimmers and the only edition where Eldar were not considered one of the top 3 armies for most of the edition.

Those are fair points, Vaktathi, but my point stands. As someone who got into both the game and eldar in 5th, the vehicle spam could be pretty miserable. The fact that I never really used a seer council meant that I was reduced to using fire dragons, BS3 storm guardians, and very expensive wraith guard to deal with armor. The guns on our vehicles were too unreliable when it came to popping vehicles, and shooting them basically meant we'd given up our chance at having a cover save.

The specialist unit thing that eldar had going on meant that we couldn't really sprinkle anti-tank weapons into a unit the way marines could, so losing a single dedicated anti-tank unit meant that you probably didn't have a lot left in your army that had any chance at all of hurting a vehicle. Unless you were spamming dragons.

So yeah, 5th edition got pretty rough for me by the end. I flat out refused to play IG players most of the time simply because it was a guaranteed mismatch unless they were doing infantry spam. Also, wound allocation was silly.

Edit: Also, my understanding is that eldar were pretty mediocre for most of 4th until they got their new book at which point they were the hackzorz. For a few months. And then 5th happened

Eldar were pretty solid all the way through 4th, just different. In the first half of 4E, they had starcannon spam (starcannons were 3 shots and *way* cheaper) along with Craftworld Eldar things like Alaitoc disruption tables that had pre-game effects that could be pretty strong, and their vehicles were pretty solid. The 4E book came out in 2006, and was around for about half of 4E's lifetime (the book came out IIRC oct 2006, 5E came out July 2008, so about half the edition's lifespan) and dropped the previous "strong" builds (no more disruption tables, nerfed Starcannons & Wraithlords) but dramatically improved the vehicles and infantry in general along with the characters and psyker capabilities along with the creation of a plastic Wave Serpent kit and the re-inclusion of Harlequins.

5E definitely had some issues, I continually find myself surprised at finding it my favorite edition because it's issues were so notable, it's just that the issues of other editions seem to much worse that it makes 5E's bearable

 Vaktathi wrote:
Eldar were pretty solid all the way through 4th, just different. In the first half of 4E, they had starcannon spam (starcannons were 3 shots and *way* cheaper) along with Craftworld Eldar things like Alaitoc disruption tables that had pre-game effects that could be pretty strong, and their vehicles were pretty solid.

Eldar weren't pretty solid. Eldar were utterly broken (way, way, way, way worse than current Serpent-spam-Eldar or 6th Edition Taudar).

There was a reason people literally build cheese-falcons to mock them. The only reason the utter travesty isn't as well remembered, is because it stood, for a while, in the shadow of GW's greatest rules-writing travesty ever, the Chaos 3.5. Codex.

With Chaos 4.0, the game returned to somewhat playable (outside of Kelly fething with it again with Nob Bikers), before 5th and the "golden age" came along.

2nd Was quite crazy and fun in parts, i found 6th to just be an updated version of 5th and 7th was totally re written, i like them all but 2nd is good for nostalgia but 7th is good for play (bigger armies only) i also remember in 3rd and 4th as i play space marines i used to love playing eldar but i don't find it as fun now.

5th. But 7th is still better than 6th because the latter was just haf assed attempt at what the former achieved, a tt anarchy. Randumb tables are crap though.

lol my post above, ofc I mixed latter and former. I was so drunk I dont even remember writing it so relatively it's not that bad, there are actual words heh.

Anyway I like some things they did for 7th, ie bringing in everything - superheavies, forgeworld, allies etc. It was quite a bad game anyway so at least you have a lot more options in a bad game now.

I like those things in theory though, I cant make myself play it. Im tired of the same ruleset 4th time in a row and still no proper overwatch/ interrupt mechanism. You cant pretend your game is tactical without it imo.




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Oh I didnt. Lol x2, hangover ftl. Seems Im smarter when drunk, going to drink asap.

hah, i agree with you plumbumbarum about superheavies

I actually liked 6th quite a bit, it just seemed like it had every working right for once. I know others hated 6th, but got me everything in it just clicked. 7th seems like a jump to the left, when we really needed a step to the right. : )

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
I actually liked 6th quite a bit, it just seemed like it had every working right for once. I know others hated 6th, but got me everything in it just clicked. 7th seems like a jump to the left, when we really needed a step to the right. : )

SJ

Maybe 8th will give us the pelvic thrust to drive us insane?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

Maybe 8th will give us the pelvic thrust to drive us insane?

I think that was 'Fine'cast.

i hope they de complicate things a bit and sort out the psychic phase when they release 8th

I also think that they should sort out some of the space marine special rules

I had the most fun in 4th edition of my entire wargaming career. It seemed like GW has just constantly gone down hill from there to the point where I really don't even recognize the game anymore.

 Agent_Tremolo wrote:
Wow. People really think 2nd edition was "simpler" or "quicker"? You had to roll on random tables for pretty much everything (vehicle damage in particular was a chore). Many weapons (vortex 'nades, for instance) created persistent effects that had to be determined once per turn. And don't get me started on "sustained fire" and its dedicated set of die. Really, I think we're romanticising 2nd edition a bit too much.

If there was one thing that 2nd Edition was not, it was quick.

Holistically a better game than 3+ Edition? Easily. But quicker, absolutely not. Psychics alone were a huge time sink. To the point that most tournaments I remember banned psyker characters out of the interests of time.


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Martel732 wrote:
But 2nd ed had worse balance between the haves and have-nots than any edition since.

Yeah, but that was entirely an external problem (Codex Books) rather than an internal problem (the rulese).

2nd Edition needed an overhaul. What it got was completely thrown out and replaced with 3rd Hammer 40K, which just suffers from horrific internal imbalance, and has dragged down every subsequent edition with it.

The problem with 2nd Edition was not understanding the ramifications of all the wacky stuff that had come out of Rogue Trader. A 2.5th Edition could have simply introduced better balanced Codex books and toned down Herohammer with more reasonable statlines. 3rd Edition's entire ruleset ensured that there'd never even be a potential for balance because of its wonky mechanics. Ever wondered why every edition it's either the shooty armies or the choppy armies complaining that they've been nerfed? That's because of 3rd Edition. 2nd Edition didn't have any choppy armies. Some units were choppy, but they had to be used smartly, and every army had the ability to shoot, which meant the game wasn't trying to balance one army using medieval tactics and one using sci-fi tactics.

i agree second needed to be re thought (less rolls on different tables) and then it would of been fine but they just replaced it in 3rd.

I am not saying third is bad by the way

To the OP:

Perhaps you should have added a poll !

I started playing at the beginning of 5th and surprisingly i prefer 7th ed.
I only play casual, though competitive, games with friends and we avoid ultra cheese lists.

I do admit i do like playing 7th for casual games but i find it works better for bigger armies. my friend and i frequently play ork v space marines and we enjoy it but i still liked 5th quite a bit.

i never played 1st or 6th but 7th is my favorite so far