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4th was my favorite edition (I do love 8th though). I played every edition, except 6th and 4th was amazing.

I loved the abstract terrain and line of sight rules. No arguments. Everything had a size and blocked things smaller than it's size. Area terrain blocked line of sight from one side to the other which made hiding things actually plausible.

The Assault phase was much better than 3rd and wound allocation was clean and simple.

Victory points were the best they've ever been. Everything was awarded as a percentage of your army point total and "kill point" style missions used the actual value of the unit.

Transport rules were pretty terrible though.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Guard Armoured Company was strong too, but too expensive to compete at the highest levels. Much like my 3-superheavy tank list is now: it was "meta defining" for casuals while being cripplingly underequipped for competitive play.

They tended to, when Chapter Approved lists were allowed, either totally overrun an opponent or get tabled by turn 3, they were very awkward lists, and the Russ was at its probably least functional state ever in 4E (ordnance restrictions on firing main gun and other weapons, no Heavy/Lumbering Behemoth, side AV12, no Ballistic Skill scatter reduction, blasts hit partially covered models on a 4+ instead of automatically, etc)

Pretty much all of this is true, though in my meta I brought it so often that it was normally the "get tabled by turn 3" option because people knew what to expect.

And Chapter Approved was allowed locally throughout all of 4th Edition until the Armoured Battlegroup list dropped, though I know it was not allowed at 'Ard Boyz after 2006.

I remember not liking it very much, primarily because transport vehicles were coffins and Chaos 3.5 Codex was brutally powerful. The terrain abstraction rules were lame (a land speeder was bigger than a Land Raider).

However, my biggest issue was the 4th edition Dark Angels Codex. It is widely regarded as one of the all time worst Codexes ever produced. My beloved Dark Angels became "Green Marines" for several years because of that abomination.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 chimeara wrote:
4th was when I started. I like to think about it as Chaos' hayday. There was so many customization options for lords, Lts, and champions. You could even give bikers chainaxes. The one thing that did suck for me was, I couldn't run raptors or obliteraters without losing my WE traits. Because they couldn't have different marks.

The terrain rules made sense to me as well. Assault was good. You could sweeping advance into another unit and attack, but only if you wiped out the unit you charged before they attacked back.

That's the 3.5 codex, the 4E chaos codex is the one that cut all the legion stuff out.

Oh yeah, I sometimes forget about that. Since when they nutered chaos I left the game.

4th remaines possibly my favorite edition, especially if you played Omega mission rules. Terrain rules were excellent. Army customization was at it's height. Non vanilla space marine chapters hadn't bloated with nonsense yet.

From what I recall the ruleset itself wasn’t bad it was just the codices for that era. It was a shift from the whacky and wild, Andy Chambers influenced days of 3rd edition where most units had obscured levels of customization to the more modern cookie cutter approach. GW also rein in a large amount of variant and Chapter Approved/White Dwarf, codices which also caused strife from people who had dropped armies.

My memory between 3rd and 4th is kind of fuzzy. They were pretty much linked if I remember and I don't think the codexes were updated between the editions which is why I kind of clump them together. Or it's my old age.


In 4th could you assault out of a transport? Or was that a 3rd Edition thing? I remember obviously Blood Angels jumping out of an overcharged Rhino or Black Templar from Armageddon Codex leaping out of a Rhino hitting on 3+ always. Back then Marines were actually one of the best armies since you could just from vehicle straight into assault. Just can't remember if that was a 3rd or 4th thing.

Also what edition had the Rending Assault Cannons of Doom? This is when Assault Cannons would Rend and ignore saves on a 6+ TO HIT. It still put out 4 shots. I remember statically this being better at killing vehicles than Lascannons (obviously you have to factor range in). I remember having started a Tyranid army and just being like WTF. In theory, big creatures should die to lascannons and gaunts to heavy bolters. You want to mess up your opponent's resources and have them not have enough anti-tank or anti-infantry fire. The assault cannon of that edition, not sure if that was 4th or 5th, was basically an all-around killer. I just pretty much knew this was a waste of time with Tyranids if facing against Assault cannon mania.

3rd Edition had the Rhino Rush. 4th was similar, but you could only assault out of a STATIONARY vehicle, which meant you had to spend a turn farting about in your transport and since transports were deathboxes it was way less good than in 3rd. Unless you had the Assault Vehicle rule (like Land Raiders, which I think were the only ones).

The assault out of Stationary Vehicles was 5th edition. Assault vehicles didn't exist in 4th, but transports were also drastically more expensive to compensate. That combined with Consolidating into combat made CC heinous in 4th edition (although it isn't exclusive as the rules didn't really change between 3rd and 4th, 4th just had much, much better assault troops).

Transports were odd in 4th; passengers had to disembark and became Pinned if the vehicle suffered any Penetrating hit, but if a Skimmer moved more than 6" on its turn any Penetrating hits were automatically downgraded to Glancing, so most transports were functionally worthless but Wave Serpents and Devilfish were supremely spammable.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I've seen people make all sorts of references along the lines of 'the good old days', or airing old grievances. I've heard lots about 2nd, 3rd and 5th ed (my first game was at the tail end of 5th just before the start of 6th).
But I almost never see people refer to 4th ed at all. Why is this, was it bad?

One simple factor is that comparatively few people were playing it.

The 2005 - 2007/2008 time were dog days with GW occasionally actually writing red numbers (as opposed to just slightly less than record profits as they did in 2012/2013 to 2013/2014, when the big GW's broke debate rolled around). 5th Edition under the early Kirby was a rebound, bringing GW out of the slump, thus it was many people's first taste of 40K (aside from the old times who had been round for 2nd/3rd).

Sunny Side Up wrote:

The 2005 - 2007/2008 time were dog days with GW occasionally actually writing red numbers (as opposed to just slightly less than record profits as they did in 2012/2013 to 2013/2014, when the big GW's broke debate rolled around). 5th Edition under the early Kirby was a rebound, bringing GW out of the slump, thus it was many people's first taste of 40K (aside from the old times who had been round for 2nd/3rd).

I never knew that, it makes the cries of "GW's going under!" that were everywhere towards the end of 7th seem a little silly.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

Sunny Side Up wrote:

The 2005 - 2007/2008 time were dog days with GW occasionally actually writing red numbers (as opposed to just slightly less than record profits as they did in 2012/2013 to 2013/2014, when the big GW's broke debate rolled around). 5th Edition under the early Kirby was a rebound, bringing GW out of the slump, thus it was many people's first taste of 40K (aside from the old times who had been round for 2nd/3rd).

I never knew that, it makes the cries of "GW's going under!" that were everywhere towards the end of 7th seem a little silly.

hrm, GW slumped hard with 7th, 40k lost the spot of top tabletop miniatures game for the first time in a literal generation to Xwing (not sure if they have clawed that back or not), and saw revenues hit inflation adjusted lows not matched since GW's rise in the mid 90's. The frustrations with 7E were well justified. GW's issue during the 4E era was that theyd invested heavily in LotR, and that bubble started to burst during 4E (movies came out 2001-2003, 4E lasted 2004-2008), and thats also about the same time they cut things like Bitz ordering and codex cycle releases were a 6-15 month wait between books.

I started in third. In some ways, fourth was a big step forward - gone was the 'rhino rush' of third ed, and screening, for example. However, fourth had some issues in the core rules - skimmers were a bit bonkers (tau skimmers did quite well in fourth, but eldar skimmers were ridiculous), independent character status could be abused a bit, and consolidation into cc ('rolling up a flank') from cc basically meant that 'deathstar' assault units almost had free reign, unless yo could take them out in the one or two turns it took for them to get there.

Overall though, the rules were 'ok'. Not terrible. Not brilliant. But workable.

Some of the codices were ridiculous though (typical for a gw game). There were some eldar builds of that era (especially spamming holostone falcons) that were ridiculous, and iron warriors broke the back of the edition. Other codices suffered at the other end of the power spectrum.

One big difference to the current era though, and one I miss, is there were No allies. You got what was in your codex. And that was it Your marines couldn't supplement themselves with guardsmen etc. The power curve was a lot less as well. The biggest tank on the board was a land raider, the meanest monstrous creature was a carnifex, or maybe a wraithlord. And probably the biggest gun available was either the bright lance or the rail gun (mathematically speaking, both cracked the hardest armour on a 4+).

Different era in a lot of ways.

^ you mean the biggest tank was the Monolith, the nastiest MC the Nightbringer, and Space Marines could supplement themselves with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers/Adeptus Arbites.

Deadnight wrote:
I started in third. In some ways, fourth was a big step forward - gone was the 'rhino rush' of third ed, and screening, for example. However, fourth had some issues in the core rules - skimmers were a bit bonkers (tau skimmers did quite well in fourth, but eldar skimmers were ridiculous), independent character status could be abused a bit, and consolidation into cc ('rolling up a flank') from cc basically meant that 'deathstar' assault units almost had free reign, unless yo could take them out in the one or two turns it took for them to get there.

Overall though, the rules were 'ok'. Not terrible. Not brilliant. But workable.

Some of the codices were ridiculous though (typical for a gw game). There were some eldar builds of that era (especially spamming holostone falcons) that were ridiculous, and iron warriors broke the back of the edition. Other codices suffered at the other end of the power spectrum.

One big difference to the current era though, and one I miss, is there were No allies. You got what was in your codex. And that was it Your marines couldn't supplement themselves with guardsmen etc. The power curve was a lot less as well. The biggest tank on the board was a land raider, the meanest monstrous creature was a carnifex, or maybe a wraithlord. And probably the biggest gun available was either the bright lance or the rail gun (mathematically speaking, both cracked the hardest armour on a 4+).

Different era in a lot of ways.

Ah yes the pre-Forgeworld days! I remember being scared and wowed by a Landraider, a Monolith, or multiple Carnifexes. Granted, we were in high school and early college so couldn't afford crazy kits like we can now. I remember people hating on my friend taking 3 Wraithlords in his army. That seems quite tame this days doesn't it? Also forgot about Iron Warriors and Obliterator spam as well in 4th. Them getting a 4th heavy choice when everyone was limited to 3 and one of them being a Basilisk in combo with the Defiler which was also indirect fire. I remember my Tyranids in 4th edition getting crushed by Assault Cannon Marine spam or Iron Warrior spam so not all is rosy. However, there was a charm to 4th in that the overall power level was lower and there was no allies. It was more a skirmish game and more thematic. Although what was the biggest complaint back then? Everyone wanted to play cross-faction armies/detachments like today

It all comes full circle haha...just live and adapt!

 Insectum7 wrote:
^ you mean the biggest tank was the Monolith, the nastiest MC the Nightbringer, and Space Marines could supplement themselves with Inquisitorial Stormtroopers/Adeptus Arbites.

Wait what? No, the nastiest MC was the carnifex. better saves, more attacks and more strength, iirc. You can also spam it. Can't spam the Nightbringer.
The nightbringer may have looked scary, but it really wasn't that impressive. It's still only a 4+ save.

Is there even stats for nightbringer in 8th? Or did that ship sail?

I remember getting destroyed by him whenever I went against him.....


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I just looked. It does exist in 8th. It's now an elite choice and has been neutered compared to 4th.

Basically, 4th had two different phases of codex design.

There was the late 3.5 phase with lots of customization, including the Space Marine codex with chapter traits, and the "buildabear" Carnifex Codex Tyranids...then there was the Gav Chaos Codex.

Deadnight wrote:One big difference to the current era though, and one I miss, is there were No allies. You got what was in your codex. And that was it Your marines couldn't supplement themselves with guardsmen etc. The power curve was a lot less as well.

Incorrect. Allies just were codex-specific to the Daemonhunters and then the Witch Hunters.

MagicJuggler wrote:Basically, 4th had two different phases of codex design.

There was the late 3.5 phase with lots of customization, including the Space Marine codex with chapter traits, and the "buildabear" Carnifex Codex Tyranids...then there was the Gav Chaos Codex.

Oh, the "Blue Period" started before that Chaos Marines Codex, and included the Eldar and Dark Angels before all the Daemons were simplified.

overall I consider it the best edition, I like it a helluva lot better than the next 3 and overwhelmingly better than 8th, but I think even 7th is better than 8th.

 MagicJuggler wrote:
Basically, 4th had two different phases of codex design.

There was the late 3.5 phase with lots of customization, including the Space Marine codex with chapter traits, and the "buildabear" Carnifex Codex Tyranids...then there was the Gav Chaos Codex.

The build a bear Tyranids was absolutely a joy for me personally. Being to take almost any weapon and armor them however you want was awesome. Made roster building and explanations to opponents a bit more tedious. But it created some really cool looking armies and who doesn't want to tailor units to exactly your profile. People still really preferred cheap stuff, but being able to give your gaunts initiative or strength was pretty cool. Just as many dakkafexes and flying tyrants though as today, so that has never changed!

Oh how can I forget Lictors!!!! They had infiltrate but it worked differently than standard Army Book infiltrate. They basically had to deploy in terrain but had to be in a specific terrain piece before the game. I always remember having to tell a neutral 3rd party or scribbling on a piece of paper and making a quick map of where your lictor was! Priceless ha! Lictors could obviously then charge their target right after showing up on the table. Honestly, the model was pretty crappy stats wise and damage wise but it seemed so cool and played psychological tricks on newbies. Usually, they just deterred a devastator squad from setting up in a certain terrain piece.

Oh in this current era of Dark Reaper hate...remember when Dark Reapers were pretty crap with Strength 5 AP 3 and only the Exarch could take a basic missile launcher? People preferred Devastators over Dark reapers since Reapers were more expensive and had 0 ablative bodies. I never thought Eldar was that great in that edition because most of the Aspect warriors were garbage and pretty much Banshees and maybe Fire Dragons were taken. It was pretty much Starcannon spam and Bright Lances. Open transport cans and shoot them to death.

hoya4life3381 wrote:
I never thought Eldar was that great in that edition because most of the Aspect warriors were garbage and pretty much Banshees and maybe Fire Dragons were taken. It was pretty much Starcannon spam and Bright Lances. Open transport cans and shoot them to death.

That last bit was the hard part that made the Eldar so filthy. You basically couldn't kill the transports.

With most transports, any penetrating hit forced immediate disembarkation and a pinning test. Well, Skimmers that moved at least 6" (and Eldar vehicles were Fast so they could always move the minimum 6" and still fire at full effect without any drawbacks) couldn't be penetrated, so they never had to worry about it (this also overrode and negated the benefit from AP1 making any glancing hit a pen and made them immune to Vehicle Annihilated results from Ordnance weapons that could kill all passengers with no saves). The tradeoff was supposed to be that they were killed on an immobilized result. Well, Eldar had wargear that negated that and allowed them to still move if stunned so you could only ever kill through a glancing hit on a natural 6, and basically the only time you could ever penetrate an Eldar vehicle was to catch it turn 1 before it can move and hope it didn't pass a "hull down" roll to downgrade the hit to a glance. To add to that, vehicles were hit on the facing of assaulting models in CC, so instead of hitting AV10 as in subsequent editions, you hit AV12 most of the time. Then of course, Skimmers could only ever be hit on 6's in CC no matter what (as long as they weren't stunned or immobilized), just because...Skimmers. But wait! Then the Wave Serpent basically made anything higher than S8 count as S8 and melta couldn't get double-pen dice, and the Falcon always took Holofields so you rolled 2d6 and picked the lowest on every glancing hit, so you could only kill or stop the transport 1 in 9 successful hits (1/36 for a kill).

It took something like 81 BS4 Lascannons to kill a Falcon on average, 18 to kill a Wave Serpent (by comparison, a Land Raider or Leman Russ required an average of 13.5 and a Chimera about 5.4, in 8E this averages about 8.5 BS3+ Lascannons, and the Chimera was even more expensive then than it is today after kit). For the classic Tac Sergeant w/Powerfist, it took 324 S8 close combat attacks to kill a Falcon on average

Likewise, the Aspect Warriors weren't total garbage. Fire Dragons were pretty great, and Dire Avengers sporting Bladestorm backed up by a Farseer were solid troops in 4E. Scorpions were functional with Infiltrate, Banshees could actually work (since they could assault out of stationary transports or hide behind area terrain and not be seen and AP3 still meant something) even if they weren't amazing, though Harlequins definitely stole the show. Harlequins were quite terrifying back then.

 Vaktathi wrote:

hoya4life3381 wrote:
I never thought Eldar was that great in that edition because most of the Aspect warriors were garbage and pretty much Banshees and maybe Fire Dragons were taken. It was pretty much Starcannon spam and Bright Lances. Open transport cans and shoot them to death.

That last bit was the hard part that made the Eldar so filthy. You basically couldn't kill the transports.

With most transports, any penetrating hit forced immediate disembarkation and a pinning test. Well, Skimmers that moved at least 6" (and Eldar vehicles were Fast so they could always move the minimum 6" and still fire at full effect without any drawbacks) couldn't be penetrated, so they never had to worry about it (this also overrode and negated the benefit from AP1 making any glancing hit a pen and made them immune to Vehicle Annihilated results from Ordnance weapons that could kill all passengers with no saves). The tradeoff was supposed to be that they were killed on an immobilized result. Well, Eldar had wargear that negated that and allowed them to still move if stunned so you could only ever kill through a glancing hit on a natural 6, and basically the only time you could ever penetrate an Eldar vehicle was to catch it turn 1 before it can move and hope it didn't pass a "hull down" roll to downgrade the hit to a glance. To add to that, vehicles were hit on the facing of assaulting models in CC, so instead of hitting AV10 as in subsequent editions, you hit AV12 most of the time. Then of course, Skimmers could only ever be hit on 6's in CC no matter what (as long as they weren't stunned or immobilized), just because...Skimmers. But wait! Then the Wave Serpent basically made anything higher than S8 count as S8 and melta couldn't get double-pen dice, and the Falcon always took Holofields so you rolled 2d6 and picked the lowest on every glancing hit, so you could only kill or stop the transport 1 in 9 successful hits (1/36 for a kill).

It took something like 81 BS4 Lascannons to kill a Falcon on average, 18 to kill a Wave Serpent (by comparison, a Land Raider or Leman Russ required an average of 13.5 and a Chimera about 5.4, in 8E this averages about 8.5 BS3+ Lascannons, and the Chimera was even more expensive then than it is today after kit). For the classic Tac Sergeant w/Powerfist, it took 324 S8 close combat attacks to kill a Falcon on average

Likewise, the Aspect Warriors weren't total garbage. Fire Dragons were pretty great, and Dire Avengers sporting Bladestorm backed up by a Farseer were solid troops in 4E. Scorpions were functional with Infiltrate, Banshees could actually work (since they could assault out of stationary transports or hide behind area terrain and not be seen and AP3 still meant something) even if they weren't amazing, though Harlequins definitely stole the show. Harlequins were quite terrifying back then.

...Kind of. You could kill the Wave Serpents (the Serpent Shield just prevented things from glancing them on better than a 4+, and they couldn't get holofields, so five lascannon shots would immobilize or kill it), you couldn't kill Falcons, but the tanks were quite expensive and had a pretty hard time killing anything themselves with BS3 and guns that didn't do much to armour. If a Falcon got into a one-on-one duel with almost any tank the game would be over long before either one actually died. (Sending a suicide Falcon into an enemy army to deliver a unit of Fire Dragons that was definitely going to die immediately afterwards was a common tactic, but that was also close to three hundred points, so if it wasn't a Land Raider you were throwing them at it wasn't actually even remotely cost-effective.)

(The 80 BS4 lascannons figure is to kill a Falcon outright, but once you'd immobilized it (which took on average 20 BS4 lascannons) it lost a big chunk of the durability benefits of being a skimmer on the next turn, and it was a lot more of a threat as a transport than from its own weapons.)

Started playing in late 3d Ed.
My memory is hazy, but if I would describe 4th Ed. in one word it would be "bland". Not "boring" or "bad", simply put "bland".
(Or "holofields" as Eldar Falcons only had a 1/36 chance of dying thanks to the moving-skimmer-can-only-be-glanced-rule.)

I generally preferred 5th over 4th if I recall correctly.

Correct Falcons were survivable but didn't do anything and were somewhere like 250-300 points out of 1500 (most common game size) to basically not die but not contribute much. I faced it a few times but never worried about it. I just don't have any Eldar horror stories that I can remember off the top of my head. Dire Avengers were alright but with Armor 4 and still quite expensive didn't quite swarm you and you could take the same anti-marine firepower and mix in a few assault cannons or heavy bolters for AP4. Melee was always an option for a Marin player too against Eldar as Eldar weren't good at all in melee except for Banshees which were overrated honestly with S3. My biggest fear was probably Iyanden with Seer Council and re-roll Fortune saves making that unit basically have a 75% invulnerable save against anything. Wraithlords were quite good from my perspective since they basically did not have damage table unlike Dreadnoughts and other vehicles. But all in all, Eldar was pretty tame and so was IG probably because melee was quite common. Even assaulting out of a stationary Rhino was still kind of worth it. Part of the problem now with Marines is that they just never really fight in melee anymore and can't find ways to earn those points back in multiple phases and a bolter shooting platform will never bring its points back.

My memory of 4th was Marines being good, Iron Warriors (rest of Chaos wasn't great), and Tau being the top armies. Tau wasn't popular at first but man did those Commanders and Broadsides put in work once people figured it out. Dark Eldar could be really really good against Marines yet kind of weak to other armies as to me they seemed to be an anti-marine army with Incubi, Distentegrators, and Bright Lances on all Speeder platforms.

Ah yes 4th edition Tau, progenitor of the "Fish of Fury" strategy.

I think I've heard of 'Fish of Fury' before. Wasn't it something to do with disembarking in front, shooting and then flat putting the devilfish in front of the fire warriors as cover?

 AnomanderRake wrote:


...Kind of. You could kill the Wave Serpents (the Serpent Shield just prevented things from glancing them on better than a 4+

Also you couldn't ever get more than one pen dice (such as with meltaguns)

and they couldn't get holofields, so five lascannon shots would immobilize or kill it), you couldn't kill Falcons, but the tanks were quite expensive

They weren't cheap, but they weren't monstrously expensive, they weren't out of line with battle tank costs of other forces. The Wave Serpent proved significantly more durable to dedicated AT weaponry in conjunction with the Skimmer rules and Eldar wargear than it should have, certainly next to anything on tracks. The Falcon was the epitome of that issue, but the Wave Serpent was pretty bad as well. For about half again what a Chimera would cost after kit, a Wave Serpent would sport more than double its effective firepower, be easily twice as durable, and of course be twice as mobile to boot .

and had a pretty hard time killing anything themselves with BS3 and guns that didn't do much to armour.
If a Falcon got into a one-on-one duel with almost any tank the game would be over long before either one actually died.

The S8 Pulse laser could do a lot to armor, particularly in 4E, and you could get up to seven S6 shots that could be fired along with the pulse laser while moving up to 12", which in 4E was a whole lot of dakka for a tank, point for point that's roughly matching anti-infantry output with a Dakkapredator while being dramatically more effective against enemy armor or MC's too.

hoya4life3381 wrote:
Correct Falcons were survivable but didn't do anything and were somewhere like 250-300 points out of 1500

Hrm, literally the most expensive Falcon you could buy was 235, most were 185-205. They weren't cheap, but they weren't *that* spendy either.

(most common game size) to basically not die but not contribute much.

They're not lacking in firepower relative to other tanks in the game at that point. Again, point for point they more than outmatch a Dakkapred or, Emperor forbid, a Russ attempting to flail about Two S6 weapons with a 2 shot S8 AP2 laser was a sweet package in 4E.

I faced it a few times but never worried about it. I just don't have any Eldar horror stories that I can remember off the top of my head.

They dominated the GT tables for the last year and a half of the edition with the invinci-skimmers pretty handily, especially in the last 10 months or so of 4E after the CSM book came out and dumped all those armies for the Lash Prince

 n0t_u wrote:

Assaults could chain together, you could consolidate into a new combat and start it all again.

Ah, good times! Khorne player here - I remember a Daemon Prince with a berserker glaive chewing through an entire Imperial Guard gunline while my Berzerkers watched in amazement.

 n0t_u wrote:

genestealers were actually pretty scary and seemed to rip through most things like they were cardboard.

Ah, bad times. Those pesky genestealers. They were scary.