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Well, pretty self explanatory.

Lot's of people say GW games aren't competitive (both supporters and detractors), and yet, all the major tournaments still keep using the current editions. And hey, more power to them, but I just find it rather strange.

I'm surprised there aren't more tournaments that go back to older editions. I mean sure, there are alternative rulesets out there, but I think they have a hard time drawing in fans of WFB and 40k due to a lack of....flavor.

Take 5th edition 40k for example. It was a great system. Vehicles were overpowered, and the codex balance wasn't perfect, but it was simple enough. Perfectly fine for both tournament and narrative play.

When 4th edition D&D hit, people who didn't like it continued to play 3.5/Pathfinder, and online discussion thrived. But here, it seems like old editions have just faded from memory.

What gives? Did everyone lose their rule books or something?

Because:

1) Organization becomes a lot harder. You have to get everyone to agree on what edition to use (including which version of codices since an edition is a multi-year period, not a discrete event), you have to find a way for everyone to get copies of the rules (which means pirating them of course, but you can't advertise that), you have to re-learn the old edition and figure answers to all of the rule debates, etc. The current edition may be completely unbalanced, but at least it's a lot easier to say "40k tournament this weekend" and have a functioning event.

2) New models aren't compatible with the old rules. For example, Tau players don't get to bring their Riptides or missile Broadsides (and Farsight players don't get to play their army at all), DA players have to leave half their codex at home, etc. So either you put a lot of work into adding those models into the old codices or you lose potential players who want to use the stuff they've invested time and money into. And that's not even considering the issues with LoW/flyers/etc, which aren't supported at all in the older rules and would be controversial additions.

3) Old rules aren't necessarily that much of an improvement. Yeah, you can argue that 5th edition was better, but was it really better enough to be worth dealing with the previous two points? Probably not.

As for the D&D comparison, it's not really the same. Pathfinder had the advantage of an existing community and ongoing support for the game, so people who didn't like 4th could just buy a new book or two and have a game that was playable "out of the box". You didn't (and don't) have to do a bunch of work to make your own version of the game just to start playing. And it's much easier to handle the work of old editions and house rules when you're talking about a five-person RPG group. You don't have to coordinate the much larger number of people required for a successful wargame tournament, you don't have to worry about bringing in new players and getting them set up with the "new" rules, and you're free to invest a lot of effort into making the perfect gaming environment without feeling like you've wasted it on someone who will play for one afternoon and never come back.

Foundry has fairly regular Oldhammer events, but I'm not sure what editions they use.

The further you go back in the rules, the less and less people have the rules and it's still copyrighted material which cannot be reproduced.

Playerbase / numbers. Simple as.

Herzlos wrote:
Foundry has fairly regular Oldhammer events, but I'm not sure what editions they use.

3rd I think.

I.e. when Bryan was in charge!

for games with smaller/decreasing fanbases that also had a generally accepted "golden period," older edition tournaments make sense. 3rd Edition WFB makes about as much sense as any other, given that it was fairly self contained, the rules are not overly expensive to buy used, and there was surprising variety in the armies, both in number of factions and in faction diversity.

40k would be really tough, because I've seen serious reasons given for using every edition of the game in Oldhammer.

The easiest way to have 40k Oldhammer is to use strictly BBB 3rd edition. The rules from the book, the armies from the book. Nothing else. Of course, that means no Tau, no Necrons, Daemons only with CSM, and no Grey Knights. There were no dedicated rules for any Space Marine Chapters, so no Wolves, DA, or BA. By all accounts, the game was pretty nicely balanced though!

The opposite approach would be to go 5th edition, which allow for many more armies, but would lead to near complete dominance by Grey Knights over time. Several Popular armies, including Tau and Eldar, had dreadfully out of date codices, while Orks and Daemons struggled hard.

It's hard enough to organize a successful tournament in current editions. A tournament based around an earlier edition greatly shrinks the potential player base and is a plan for failure.

Also, the kind of folks that tend to do tournaments are those who are interested in the evolving meta of the game, the most current units (can't use those in an earlier edition), and the best and most up-to-date combos. You lose all that when you go back to an earlier edition.

 Delicate Swarm wrote:

When 4th edition D&D hit, people who didn't like it continued to play 3.5/Pathfinder, and online discussion thrived.

If you played RPGs, you'd understand why that's not a valid comparison. If an RPG group decides to stick with the older edition of a game when a new one comes out, that's a decision that's probably going to affect a half dozen people at most. The group is all right there to talk out what they want to do and reach and agreement.

For a tournament, we'll then you're talking about something that's probably going to be organized by a store and involve a LOT more people. You announce you're going to have a 4th edition tournament, so what so you do for all the players who started after 2008? They don't have the books, they don't know that edition of the rules, so you're already cutting down your pool of attendees, which is the opposite of what a well run store event should do.

You'll also find that there are lots of people who play the older edition of GW games, but again, you're going to see it most amongst small groups where it's feasible for one guy to say, 'hey, let's play 4th edition! I've got the books!' and the others to agree and a good time is had by all.

 Polonius wrote:
By all accounts, the game was pretty nicely balanced though!

Sortakinda. I forget if Rhino Rush was allowed by the core book, or if that took until the SM codex was released, but IG LasPlas spam was one of the broken things right out of the gate (because of how cheap the combo was). I want to say Eldar could get up to some funky tricks too, but I might be conflating what you could do with the Codex and the Ranger Disrpuption Table.

 Portugal Jones wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
By all accounts, the game was pretty nicely balanced though!

Sortakinda. I forget if Rhino Rush was allowed by the core book, or if that took until the SM codex was released, but IG LasPlas spam was one of the broken things right out of the gate (because of how cheap the combo was). I want to say Eldar could get up to some funky tricks too, but I might be conflating what you could do with the Codex and the Ranger Disrpuption Table.

Rhino Rush was allowed, but limited by pretty weak assault troops. The crazy stuff didn't appear until later, and basically every army could rhino rush somehting effective.

IG could spam the hell out of las/plas, true.

Maybe I should say that 3rd edition BBB was probably the most externally balanced, with no army having a real advantage. The internal balance was a dumpster fire. Still, if you bring pupu platter armies, everybody could have a good time.

 Delicate Swarm wrote:

What gives? Did everyone lose their rule books or something?

Bluntly put, yeah, everyone did lose some of their rule books--they lost the FAQs and the unwritten agreements about how to fix the rules. Because when the game edition gets discontinued, the FAQs for the rulebooks get removed from the main website and then suffer from bitrot as the existing copies slowly get deleted or misplaced.

Try to find the FAQs for 4th edition 40k, making sure that you're finding the latest and best version of those FAQs. And then try to remember what the consensus for all of the rules issues that weren't covered by the FAQs were.

 Eilif wrote:
...and is a plan for failure...

Unless, of course, you have a local playerbase who are interested in such things.

There are a couple of groups down here that have been getting back into 2nd edition 40K tournaments over the last year or so, as they've had local groups who picked it up again and were happy to run with it.


I suspect that a lot of the reason that we don't see more events being run for previous editions is that people just assume it's not really a thing, and so nobody organises them. If more people asked for it, there would be more of it.

Because stores that help sponsor the tournament can't sell you oop books and materials....

I could see 3rd 40k tourneys using only the main rulebook because it had army lists printed in the back. Any armies not included in there such as Tau, Necrons, and Adeptus Mechanics (or however you spell it) would be counts as forces like Eldar, Chaos Marines and/or SoBs.

privateer4hire wrote:
I could see 3rd 40k tourneys using only the main rulebook because it had army lists printed in the back. Any armies not included in there such as Tau, Necrons, and Adeptus Mechanics (or however you spell it) would be counts as forces like Eldar, Chaos Marines and/or SoBs.

There's no real need to limit it like that. Any of the codexes from 3rd ed onwards are fairly readily available (in many cases for next to nothing) on the second hand market. It's only 2nd ed and Rogue Trader books that are hard to get, and even there in many cases 'hard' just means 'expensive, but fairly commonly available'...

I think the difficulty for Rogue Trader and 2nd edition would be trying to get complete, undamaged sets for things like the wargear cards, or the vehicle templates. I could see trying to recreate 40k in the days of Chapter Approved and the alternate combat rules being feasible because the Chapter Approved FAQ and errata is going to make finding a reliable and complete copy of the rules easier.

I mean, what was it, the 2nd edition virus bomb card where the designer wrote a public statement saying "I'm sorry, please just tear that card up, and forgive me for my sins"?

 solkan wrote:
I mean, what was it, the 2nd edition virus bomb card where the designer wrote a public statement saying "I'm sorry, please just tear that card up, and forgive me for my sins"?

No, the Virus Bomb was fine, it was the Virus Outbreak Strategy Card that they instructed everyone to get rid of.

It's generally only in sci-fi/WHFB games where new units/concepts are introduced and the miniature range evolves. As said this is exacerbated when there are constantly new miniatures coming in (someone above used the example of Tau players wanting to use a Riptide in 40k tournies etc.)

Not the case with historicals though - games like DBA and FOG continue to get lots of players and have done so for years, simply because the setting is.. well, set! The elephants of Hannibal aren't suddenly going to morph into a squadron of psychic oliphants toting missile racks. People play those games on the merits of their rule system.

I do wonder now though if WHFB tournaments will continue just because AoS is so different. No doubt some will move to KoW, some to AoS (although, I think not as many just because the age demographic for the WHFB tournament scene seems to be a bit older from my experience). And, consider that long discontinued games like Epic and Bloodbowl continue to have a really popular tournament scene, the fans of those games (and it will be massive pool for WHFB) have taken those games and run with them, even if the official support for them has discontinued.

 insaniak wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:
I could see 3rd 40k tourneys using only the main rulebook because it had army lists printed in the back. Any armies not included in there such as Tau, Necrons, and Adeptus Mechanics (or however you spell it) would be counts as forces like Eldar, Chaos Marines and/or SoBs.

There's no real need to limit it like that. Any of the codexes from 3rd ed onwards are fairly readily available (in many cases for next to nothing) on the second hand market. It's only 2nd ed and Rogue Trader books that are hard to get, and even there in many cases 'hard' just means 'expensive, but fairly commonly available'...

The problem with 3rd edition is... which third edition? TVR/TAR were the big split, but the core rules were heavily FAQ'd and errata'd, and chapter approved added all kinds of new material, such as the 5+ terminator invulnerable save!

Late 3rd edition was arguably the most vibrant and diverse time to play until 7th edition, but the balance issues were legendary. For a friendly, bring what you want, type tournament, it could be a lot of fun, and wouldn't exclude anything other than AdMech and the newer units.

The flip side is that relearning all the rule would be tough, while relearning BBB 3rd edition takes about a half hour.